We left Port Douglas at a ridiculous 4 am
(not used to these early mornings now) to catch our flight from Cairns to Perth
with a pit stop in Brisbane. All was fine until we began our landing in Perth when
we got to within 50 ft of the runway, the engines started to roar and instead of
going down, we started to lift off again! After the recent events it was a
little unnerving as the plane did a loop and started it’s second attempt, after
much turbulence and what seemed like a very long time we eventually landed. We have since been advised that Perth is
known for bumpy landings!
Anne and Geoff were waiting for us at the
airport, long time and very special family friends of Nina’s family. They have been really wonderful during our stay
with them and completely spoilt us with lots of home made cooking, wine and
great company. In fact it was a difficult decision to eventually move
on!
While there we began the week with a tour
of Kings Park, courtesy of Anne, Geoff and Steven, with lovely views over the
city and river.
We also went to Hillaries Boat Yard which had an amazing
selection of yachts and a beach lagoon similar to Airlie Beach and Brisbane.
On Thursday, we ventured to the City on the
bus and spent the day walking through Perth and getting a feel for the city. It
is a nice place and obviously undergoing development, particularly on the river
front. We visited the bell tower which houses bells from St Martins in the
Fields, London and it was an interesting trip ….although we started the tour
backwards and interfered with the local closing routine!
Friday was spent in Freemantle which was a
really interesting town with many old buildings, massive docks and a very hungry
seagull!
All the shops were decked out in the purple colour of the Freemantle
Dockers AFL (Aussie football) team as they were preparing for the end of season
semi-final to Port Adelaide. Unfortunately, the enthusiasm did not pass beyond
Saturday night as they lost.
However, our Saturday night was more
enjoyable as Anne and Geoff hosted a BBQ for their friends and we were able to
chat with others who had migrated to Western Australia. It was very interesting
listening to the different tales and comparing the West coast with our
experience of the East coast of Australia and it highlighted how massive the
country is and how they have such different priorities.
The BBQ was excellent and Geoff excelled
with his perfectly cooked steak!
The next day we ventured back to Hillaries
to meet Aaron, an old friend of Patrick’s. Or rather a friend who he has known
a long time! Aaron used to work at the bank, before changing career and joining
the UK police before emigrating to the outskirts of Perth to take up a role
with the Western Australian Traffic police. So we had plenty to catch up on and
it was interesting to hear his experiences in WA as well. We had lunch in a little
café along the quay, although the staff were a little too keen and kept asking
for our order every few minutes, but eventually realized that we had far too much to talk about to over lunch …..
It was great to see Aaron again after all
these years and given the size of Australia, it was even more fortunate that we
were able to meet only 30minutes down the road from where we were based.
Our trips to Freemantle and to see Aaron
were made a lot easier by the generosity of Anne who kindly lent us her brand
new car – it had only done 1500kms and was 2 weeks old! Needless to say we were
very careful. In fact, Anne was kind enough to insist that we use it to visit
the Margaret River, thanks Anne!
From Monday to Thursday, we ventured to
Busselton and stayed at the Abbey Beach resort. Which is a very small town but
boasts the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere at 1.8kms long!
In
fact it is so long that a train operates to take people out to the end of the
jetty where there is an interesting observatory, which goes down to the sea
floor, so you can see the fish in their natural habitat ! In fact, we were very
lucky as it had been closed the day before due to bad weather and poor
visibility. We saw a variety of fish and coral even with the murky sea.
After driving for some hours to reach the
Margaret River, we decided to leave the car for a day and hired bikes from the
hotel to cycle 11kms to the town centre. The bike path was along the coast
and had amazing views of the bay. The bikes were rather cranky and the hotel actually
advised that we didn’t need to bother to lock them as no one would “bother to nick
them” and they were right! Although they were more comfortable than Port
Douglas!
The next day we ventured to the town of Margaret
River and walked along the river which was very pleasant.
On the way back we
did stop at one of the many wineries and purchased a box of Sauvignon Blanc –
which we luckily got the chance to sample before we left and thought it was pretty
good! The winery had lovely gardens and various works of art ….even in the
toilets with appropriate paintings for the respective clientele….although there
was a little notice of “please don’t steal our property….we believe in karma”,
which was enough to make you think twice if you had been inclined!
During our last few days, we caught the bus
to Kalamunda which was the town closest to Anne and Geoff’s and spent a few
hours checking out the shops, then on Saturday we went to a local weir which is
famous for it’s pipeline which starts in Perth and travels 600+kms to
Kalgoorlie. It was built in the early 1900’s to support the goldmines with all
of the cement imported from England and Germany. It is amazing to think of the
engineering abilities of these pioneers when the technology and tools were so
basic compared to today, along with the terrain being so challenging. This was
one of the hottest days during our stay, considering it was only the start of
spring the temperature reached 32c and the sun was really intense.
To highlight the challenges this weather brings a
group of hikers had become lost on one of the treks and 2 helicopters had been
tasked to find them – thankfully they did find them, much to their embarrassment
they were delivered to the pub we had stopped at, by the police! The walk is called the Bibbulum Trek and starts
in Kalamunda and goes on for 1100kms to Albany – maybe we will leave that one
for now.
All this time, we have been pampered and spoilt
by Anne and Geoff with some wonderful dinners and lots more wine…and we had
joked that Anne needed to keep it up to maintain her tripadivsor star rating.
As they had been the perfect hosts, we created a spoof tripadvisor Certificate
of Excellence award, which we felt they truly deserved!
It was really quite emotional leaving on
Sunday as we had such an excellent time with them all.
However the emotion turned to something
else when we had to comply with the inflexibility of Virgin Australia’s baggage
policy and move around half or our luggage from one case to another – due to their
‘ridiculous’ weight restrictions!……needless to say Patrick was a little peeved,
which some might say was an understatement, but they will probably not be on his preferred
airline list any time soon!
I can’t type what he said……
