Perth - more than Heath Ledger's home town!

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Trip Start Mar 23, 2009 Previous
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  Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Wednesday, April 22, 2009

When I arrived in Australia, I didn't have a set itinerary but knew the main places I wanted to see - Melbourne, Sydney, the Outback, the Great Barrier Reef - all of the classics when you think of Australia. As my schedule started unfolding when I left Melbourne, I realized I had about 5 days to play with after my Great Ocean Road tour to Adelaide, and before my Outback tour out of Alice Springs. Fortunately, Qantas has a ton of cheap fares between cities, and although it was the equivalent of "popping" over to LA from New Orleans, I decided to check out Perth in Western Australia - and I'm so glad I did!
Perth is a waterfront city, with a downtown situated on the Swan River and suburbs leading to beaches and islands of the Indian Ocean. It also has a distinctive wine region in the Swan River Valley, so my goal for 5 days in Perth was to sample more water activities and wine - maybe you're detecting a pattern? From my hostel, I booked a wine tour for Day 2 and scuba diving excursion for Day 3. I thought I would use Day 1 to explore the city and Day 4 to check out the suburban beaches - so I was all set to start exploring.

The first morning after I arrived, I took a jog along the bike/foot path that runs along the Swan River from downtown. The Aussies are serious about biking and exercise in general, so there are bike paths everywhere - we could take a lesson in the States. I had a great chance to orient myself and cleaned up after my jog to walk around the city. I checked out King's Park, which overlooks the city and has tons of paths through Botanical Gardens. This was Thursday, and Saturday was their national war memorial holiday, ANZAC Day, so the gardens were being prepped for the weekend's parades and ceremonies - it was beautiful. On my way back to my hostel, I stopped at the Western Australia Museum, which has the largest collection of Aboriginal art - also beautiful!
The next day was my wine tour - I certainly didn't want to fall behind in my survey of Australia's various winery areas! I was picked up at 9:30 a.m. and joined a group of 11 for a tour of the Swan River Valley's boutique vineyards. Western Australia has a larger and more well-known wine region in Margaret River, but that area is several hours south of Perth, so I was happy to stay local and sample WA's second most-popular area. We hit 5 wineries, a brewery and chocolate factory and had a great time. Needless to say, it was a full day, and I was in bed early.
Day 3 was my scuba excursion, and I met up with the dive company at 7:30 a.m. to head out to the boat. Last year I took my Open Water certification courses and was glad I would be able to dive on this trip. But - I had expected to dive the Great Barrier Reef and Thailand. It was fantastic to discover this gorgeous area of coastline off of Perth, which is the southernmost point for tropical reefs. The excursion I bought was a day trip for 2 dives, but after talking to the Dive Master, I ended up joining the Advanced Open Water class - I love a good sales job! It worked out that I didn't really have any set plans for the next day , so I could do 2 training dives that afternoon, a night dive in the evening and the final 2 training dives the following day - SOLD! I did my Nature, Navigation and Night training dives first, and then a Deep Dive (up to 90'!) the next day. The last dive was the best, as we had amazing swim-through reefs and a few wrecks to explore. The water and sea-life was amazing, and I'm really excited to be at the next level of SCUBA for the rest of the trip - and for the future!
I was leaving the next afternoon, so I needed 24 hours of rest between my dive and flight, so I wrapped up the dive trip and I headed back to my hostel with my new certification in hand. I met some new friends at the hostel, so after my instant noodles from the vending machine dinner, I shared some of the wine I picked up on the tour and had great evening in-house.
Till next time - from The Outback!! (Actually, it will probably be AFTER the Outback, I'm not expecting much internet availability for the next few days :)

Stephanie

Post your own travel photos for friends and family Pictures

Perth from King's Park	Downtown Perth from King's Park	King's Park	King's Park
King's Park 2	King's Park 3	War Memorial, King's Park	Western Australia Museum
Winery 1	Winery 2	Winery 3	Wine is Fully Sic!
Rottnest Island	Heading to dive site	Almost Advanced diver	Stopped here for lunch
Heading to dive site 2

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