Perth
Trip Start
Feb 19, 2006
1
3
48
Trip End
Aug 16, 2006
Perth, Australia
Thursday, March 9, 2006
For those of you who didn't know, my brother's friend Rick lives in Perth, and has done so for about 3 years. He very kindly offered to show me around some of the sights, which was very kind (and extremely useful as he has a car!)
We went to the Swan Bell Tower, which is right by the main harbour, and houses bell given from St. Martin in the Fields church, London (thought you'd like this Dad!) After this we drove down some of the main streets in central Perth. The city is lovely, and really not very big (well it's quite sprawling but as with everywhere here the buildings are rarely more than ground floor!). We then headed up to Kings park which is beautiful and you get an amazing view of the city from here. The rules on qualifying to be a city are different here - to qualify, the town must have had a population of 20,000+ for 3 years min.
Anyway, after Kings Park we were too hot to do anything, so drove to City Beach (which even has a shark lookout tower) and chilled for the afternoon. The following day the rest of my gang returned from the Exmouth and we pottered about. That evening we had a BIG night out. It was like being a student again hanging out with the 'kids'!! Rick joined us too and we made the most of all the crazy backpacker offers (ie free beer!)
The next day was a bit of a right-off, so Rick drove us to the beach with a cool box (Eski) full of water and we splashed about in the sea for a few hours.
Thurs I went to the lovely town of Freemantle just south of Perth (half hour by train). It's lovely in 'Freo' and I visited the Prison where the original convicts came over and built that, followed by highways and all sorts of other stuff. I won't bore you with all the touristy things but it was a lovely day (and quite educational!)
Fri - 5 of us went over to Rottnest Island. This place is amazing as you'll see by the photos. On Rottnest lives a creature called a Quokka. These are not found anywhere else in the world but this little island..wierd! They are really cute and you can stroke them and everything. We did a hop-on, hop-off bus tour of the island which has really beautiful beaches and scenery....loved it. Plus the boat ride was cool. It was a really fast boat that shot over in 25 mins. On the way back Tim & I sat out on the back as it bounced over the massive ocean waves - brilliant!
