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Timo and Charlo Down Under
Perth, Australia |
Perth, Australia
After 9 months in Asia it was finally time to head to Australia where we don’t need to worry about language difficulties and we are sure to get more than a variety of different rice and noodle dishes on the menu. Who would have thought that getting into Australia would have been one of our more difficult visas. Being too old for the one year backpacker work visa we had the choice to take the standard visa that allows stays of 3 months at a time and would have meant we needed to leave oz after our firth three months and come back in or to apply for a 6 month tourist visa, we went for the latter and after spending a few hundred dollars, being sent to a private hospital in Kuala Lumper for Xrays to check for TB and spending a month thinking that I had TB as Tim’s visa was approved and mine wasn’t out of nowhere my approval come through and we were finally cleared for entry, phew.
Our arrival in Perth was a little surreal as we walked into the arrivals hall to find two familiar faces from jersey looking at us, Gillian and Howie who we said our goodbyes to in Jersey back in 2012 had upped sticks and now live in Perth, with it seems most of Jersey. Seriously we have more friends in Perth than anywhere else in the world, what a treat to have so many friends in one place.
So not only did we have the joy of a warm welcome and a lift from the airport, we had a house to go to for pretty much our entire stay. Lorna a friend of Tim’s family who he hadn’t seen for about 15 years just handed over her house and car keys and gave them to us for the duration of our stay as she was visiting family in Samoa and New Zealand. Just unbelievably kind and given that accommodation in Australia is around £70-£100 a night, a major saving for us.
Something that was not quite so warm about our welcome in Perth was the weather, I can only congratulate the Australian tourist board who have done a phenomenal job at convincing the rest of the world that Australia is hot and wonderful all year, but it is a blatant lie and we were absolutely freezing. Granted, after a year in temperatures of 30 degrees our blood may have thinned and we are a little more sensitive to the cold than we used to be but seriously 9 degrees at night was quite a shock and sent me running to Kmart to buy a whole new winter wardrobe (well a pair of slippers, pyjamas and two long sleeve tops) ha ha.
We were a little lazy during our stay in Perth, just enjoying having a house of our own and eating exactly what we wanted. I never thought a shopping trip to buy bread, Branston pickle, salt and vinegar crisps, veggie sausages and cheese would be such a highlight.
Next up was a takeaway and a night in with Gillian & Howie, or GTag and DJ Howie as they were renamed after a few wines, a screening of Beat Street and a few hours dancing in the spare room with DJ Howie on the decks. Our first Australian hangover and a great cooked breakfast, lush.
We did manage to explore a fair amount of Perth, we had a day trip to Scarborough Beach and I was mortified after watching the news of a huge great white at City Beach to realise that this is the next beach along. With this information I decided to put nothing more than my big toe in the sea in Western Australia and instead took up a different Australia activity, eating Burgers at the beach.
One of our favourite places in Perth is Freemantle so what better than a day trip with our lovely Melissa, James and the boys for fish and chips. Freo did not disappoint, the sun was shining and there was a huge ferris wheel to take photos of. Tim was a little upset when the lovely Angus (age nearly 5)was kind enough to go and sit with him to eat his fish and chips, this was a very cute situation until Angus decided he had had enough stood up and brushed the sand off his bum all over Tim’s fish and chips. Tim was unsurprisingly unimpressed, ha ha!
Having been in Australia for nearly two weeks it seemed just outright wrong that we had not seen any marsupials (save for a glimpse of a kangaroo across a golf course) so we decided to visit Caversham wildlife park. I didn’t really have very high expectation so this day trip but it turned out to be possibly my favourite wildlife park day out ever. We hand fed tons of tame and adorable kangaroos with parts of joeys poking out of their pouches left right and centre, Tim was chased by a selection of goats in the petting zoo, we met a variety of birds, lizards and furry marsupials at the meet the wombat show and most importantly we got to meet, stroke and have our photo taken with Neil the wombat. I love Neil. I never realised how big wombats were, but they are about 1meter in length, weight between 20 and 35kg but despite their round appearance they can run at around 25mph. I would advise never upsetting a wombat as they are capable of bowling a human over should they so choose. After some pats with koalas and some more kangaroo feeding it was time to leave our new found marsupial friends in peace, bye Neil!
No trip to Perth is complete without a trip overt to Rotness Island, my reasoning for this is that it is one of the only places in the world that you can see Quokkas, a small marsupial which is sometimes known as a Kangaroo Rat given that it is a bit like a small ratty kangaroo. Our day didn’t start well, we had our boat booked and knew we had to head to the city to park. Possibly in retrospect we should have had a trial run as trusting our sat nav to send us to a car park in the morning rush hour traffic turned out to be a total disaster. We arrived in the city and could see the harbour and where the satnav told us to “turn right and you have reached your destination” we were faced with a building site where we suspect a car park once stood. So we carried on past and somehow managed to get onto a highway with no way to turn around. Our boat departure was now just 15 minutes away and we were speeding the total opposite way out of the city. Amazingly by some miracle, we managed to turn around head back into the city and eventually found a space and sprinted to the harbour with our picnic to the boat which thankfully seemed in no hurry to leave on time. Snapping and ratty with each other we were beginning to wonder if this day trip was going to be a good idea.
Thankfully our day improved significantly and all the fuss and hassle was totally worth it when we were on a speed boat zipping around the side of Rottness island in search of migrating humpback whales. After just a few minutes we saw the tell tale smoke rising from the water and a large oval that looks like an oil slick which is known as the whales footprint. In just a few minutes we saw a mother and her calf pop up for air 10 times at least. Sadly there were no whale acrobatics for us, but just seeing a glimpse of these magnificent creatures made my day. Next up we carried on around the coast to find a colony of New Zealand Fur seals just chilling out sunbathing with their fins crossed floating on their backs, too cute.
So back on dryland it was time to collect our transport for the day, my old nemesis the bicycle. Thankfully there are no cars and just cycle paths on Rotto as the locals call it (we have quickly learnt that adding an ‘O’ to the end of any name makes it Ozzie, so in order to fit in we have changed our names to Timo and Charlo, classy) so I confidently took to the cycle paths and we set off to find a picnic spot. It didn’t take us long to find a deserted patch of beach with pure white sand and a huge pelican patrolling the beach to stop and refuel.
Rotto, is just beautiful, white sand, blue sea and best of all Quokkas. After a short cycle we were soon in Quokka territory and the little furries were everywhere. Quokkas are actually the reason that Rottness is so named as the first visitor (a Dutch mariner) to the island thought that they were rats and the name defives from ‘Rats nest’, a little factoid for you there! Quokkas are just too cute, they are not at all afraid of
humans which made for some fantastic photo opportunities. One little quokka was so brazen it actually tried to climb into my rucksack to get at our picnic, cheeky. The day flew by and it was soon time to hand back our bikes and get back on the boat and home. Thankfully we managed to find the carpark and the car and didn’t need to sell a kidney to pay the parking charges which was quite a relief.
As it was Halloween what better way to spend an evening than having a night tour of Freemantle prison, we convinced Gillian and Howie to join us and so after dinner in Freo we arrived to be met with some fairly rowdy groups of people dressed up ready for their Halloween tour. Tim was initially refused his ticket as he had not made an effort to dress up as his name sake Dr Frank N Furter. It was a little unfortunate that we were not refused entry and given a refund as this tour was just terrible. Our guide was seemingly a drunk Irishman dressed as a monk who forgot what he was telling us half way through most stories so we pretty much learnt nothing about the prison or had any scary stories. At one point he seemingly got lost and took us to the bin sheds?! I am still not sure if the drunkenness was a part of the act or an intention part of the tour. The highlight of the tour came just moments before the end when a dummy was hurled over one of the balconies to conclude a part of the story that the useless guide was probably half way through telling us. Gillian who had been a bit jumpy possibly due to the fear of the weird guide jumped backwards and pushed Tim into way, ha ha brilliant. Sorry Gillian and Howie for making you endure it, at least we can look back and laugh!
Time to catch up with some more Perth friends, the lovely Tony & Roo, who we met in Vietnam. Here we were introduced to the fantastic phenomenon known as public BBQ’s. Amazingly all over Australia, in every park and rest stop there are a selection of electric BBQ’s which are completely free to use, you just need to bring your food and you are set with a BBQ and picnic benches. We had a lovely BBQ lunch and catch up with a fabulous view of Perth CBD.
So during our stay in Perth we spend several days and evenings with our lovely Melissa and James preparing for one of the most awaited events of the year, Angus’ 5th birthday. With a Lego theme, there was cutting out aplenty, sticking and baking to be done in preparation for the big day. Tim and I also undertook our own project and made our very own Lego man to make an appearance at the party. Thankfully the party was an overwhelming success, although the Lego man terrified and delighted children and parents in fairly equal measures. Towards the end of the party I was having to use my best “are you still here” looks to get the children off the bouncy castle and out the gate with their party bags so I could get a go on the bouncy castle. After about thirty seconds the pain of bouncing was too much and I couldn’t wait to get off, seriously any fitness fans out there, set up a bouncy castle fitness class, it could so be the next big thing!
One last chance to catch up with Tony and Roo before we head to the east coast and where better than a picnic in Kings Park with fantastic views over the city and a chance to play camera club as the sun set and the light of the city came on. Bye guys, I wonder where we will meet next?!
So our final days in Perth we managed to squeeze in a quick cup of coffee with our friend Tamsin and have some coffee cake and baby cuddles with Lorna. With Lorna home from her holidays we took up the offer to spend a few days with Melissa and her family to give Lorna a chance to unpack from holiday. What we didn’t take into account was the sleep deprivation that comes with children. The 6am wake up of two children bouncing on an inflatable mattress was certainly an interesting way to start the day and the chaos that reined in a house with 2 sick children was just exhausting. To Meliss and James and all my friends out there that are parents – Respect; but I am putting on my racksack and leaving behind this mayhem :o)
Thank you to everyone in Perth who made our stay amazing, it is a real treat to have seen to so many familiar faces and to catch up on so many lost years.
East coast here we come.
Beans Around The World 