Travel Diary

Perth (24th August - 1st September)

The flight from Perth was my earliest start so far, mainly due to the fact that the cheap bus from the hostel to the airport ran so infrequently. So despite the flight being at 8am I had to be ready for the bus at 5:35am, I did as a result get pretty nice seats at the front of both flights though. Cairns airport I thought was pretty bad in that once the flight is called and you hand over your boarding pass, you then basically go outside and follow painted lines on the concrete to your plane. But that was before I got to Alice Springs where you get off the plane and follow coloured lines to get to the terminal (and then cross the path of taxiing planes when you leave as well). There was a bit of a hold up at Alice which meant I ended up arriving in Perth about the same time as my parents, so instead of as planned me catching a bus over to the International terminal to meet them, they came and picked me up in the hire car. We eventually found our hotel/apartment which was very plush. The next day we headed out first around Perth, myself hobbling quite badly (it seems that a blister on my big toe had become infected whilst scuba diving in the reef). We ended up at the Swan Bells, which is a quite fancy new building (which the Australians naturally kicked up a fuss about, nothing to do with the way it looked, just that the government was paying for it, they don’t seem to see the point in spending money to boost the local economy do Australians). The bells were originally in St Martins church off Trafalgar Square in London, and we even got to ring one of them, which is actually surprisingly tricky. Then in the afternoon we headed up to Kings Park for more of a hobble. The next day we took a very long drive out to the Pinnacles which is a very odd place, a desert filled with what look like props from the original Star Trek, in other words large artificial looking columns of stone. We also visited a beach, and gave up on the idea of lunch due to the whole area being either very local or the only food store not really selling much.

We intended the next day to go to Scarborough, however much like the English town with the same name, there wasn’t much to see. We carried on up the coast and eventually found the AQWA centre which was a big aquarium type place with various attractions. The biggest attraction was the moving walkway which went through a tunnel under an aquarium full of turtles, sharks and other reef marine life. It was also here that I saw one of the most amusing sights I’ve seen in a while, the fat family who couldn’t actually manage to stand for the length of the trip round so were instead sat down on the moving walkway. We also got to so the seals feeding, although it has to be said they are very smelly creatures. We headed to another beach on the way home, City Beach, which provided some more amusing signs for the collection, my personal favourite being Caution: Dumping Surf.

On the Thursday we took an all day wine tour around the Swan Valley, which took in 5 wineries, a cheese factory, a brewery and a chocolate factory. Not all the wines were that good (and there were lots unlike the backpacker tasting trip in Melbourne, usually 7-9 different ones to try at each), but they all did some quite good ports and muscats. The cheese factory was good, chocolate factory expensive but providing lots of free samples, and the brewery was quite pleasant. The brewery did provide amusement in the form of the barman having the campest german accent ever (beat Herr Lipp of the League of Gents hands down), but it turned out that he just put the accent for the customers.

On Friday we decided to take a trip to Guildford and York which are both heritage towns, which means the National Trust owns them and determines what people can build there etc. That said they’re both only just over 100 years old which is quite young in English terms, oh and there’s not really much at either. In between we ended up at another winery which actually produced quite good wine (a novelty considering the others we’d been to the day before).

On the Saturday we just pottered about town in the morning before taking a boat trip to Fremantle and back. We had dinner at the Chinese restaurant at the pier which we’d been to a few nights before. It was quite an interesting meal as we’d asked the manager to serve us whatever he wanted. So we started with Oysters, followed by Squid and then something else which I forget. The main course was Lobster (which was very fresh) and noodles which was very nice. I should also mention the quite different Peking Duck we had the first time we went there. Instead of getting the duck to put in your pancakes you just got the crispy skin (and they made the pancakes for you as well), then you got a second course made of the actual duck that you ate inside lettuce bowls.

Sunday was spent doing not much except packing and getting some sleep for the early start on Monday for my flight to Singapore/Kuala Lumpur.

My parents dropped me off at 4:30am at Perth airport (they had a later direct flight to KL). My Dad mentioned something about the place being pretty deserted when he last flew out of Perth, but we saw a person at a check in desk through the glass and some people waiting. As it turns out despite being able to wait inside the airport the check in desks don’t open until 5am, and in fact it was a cardboard cut-out by the check in desk, and the person we thought was waiting was in fact a bronze bust of someone. Before 5 though a few more people turned up and whilst the duty frees etc didn’t open until 6am at least the café was open.

Posted by Alexis at September 8, 2003 09:59 AM