Days 171-173

I've come thirty kilometres up the road to Perth. Trivia fans will be pleased to learn it's the world's most isolated city. I could believe it's the world's hottest city myself as it's hit forty-two degrees while I've been here.

01 Perth skyline

The bus was free of charge. I hadn't paid the smoking bus driver as he wasn't ready to give change until he was back in the bus. I intended to pay on my way out but a funny thing happened preventing this. The guy had just sat in the driver's seat and was just about to leave when someone called him to the rear of the bus to shut the rear exit doors properly. As he attended to that I felt the bus pull away anyway. I looked up to see no driver and the wheel was turning by itself! In a tiny moment I considered lunging forward myself and hitting the breaks. But, I was tired, hungover and had my bags all on my lap. Plus the driver was running down the aisle and I couldn't calculate whether I'd impede him with disastrous results (and some sort of legal bother to deal with). Much better to see if he could make it eh? He sort of did, but we ploughed into the bus in front anyway despite his efforts. Everyone in the bus saw it coming and were able to prepare for impact so no harm done. We were shepherded off the bus and on to another and so I got an interesting first taste of Aussie public transport for free.

02 Another view from King's Park view points

I checked into the luxurious Perth City YHA Hostel. You don't normally use the words hostel and luxurious in the same sentence but this place has a swimming pool, air conditioned rooms and good kitchens, lifts, etc etc. I met a couple of lads from York in the sadly men-only dormitory. They're nice guys but just arrived from the UK and are boozing every afternoon and eating in restaurants so I'm not able to keep up with that.

I took a walk around the King's Park in Perth. It's a very well turned out park full of flora from all Australia dating back to when the Europeans first arrived. It's almost like an exhibition and park all in one. There are nice war memorials and a touching memorial to the 88 Australians who died in the Bali bombings a few years ago. It was quite an effort going round in the heat but I bought a hat and shades and slapped on the factor 30 sun screen.

03 Inside the park

On Wednesday morning I got up at 4.40am to watch the football. More luxury from the hostel - Sky TV with all the sports channels! There were a few of us in there, dozing in and out of consciousness because of the early hour not the football. The game was Barcelona v Liverpool and despite losing one nil on the night Liverpool progress to the Quarter Finals thanks to their Nou Camp performance I missed when I was on the boat to Oz.

After going back to bed for a few hours I took the train back to Fremantle where I took some tests at a job agency. They seemed so interested in taking my details that they didn't really talk about what jobs they had and how much they paid. I think I'll end up being offered something like Nick was doing - basic office admin.

04 Forty Two degrees is too much!

Meanwhile I've been responding to adverts on the hostel walls offering lifts up the West coast. I've said before I would like to travel in a group road trip if possible. So, with any luck either the job or the trip will come good and I'll be throwing myself into something new soon!