Great Southern Land

Monday, February 21, 2005
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Australia is big. I mean really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think the Sydney Harbour Bridge was pretty huge, but that's just peanuts to Australia!'Apologies to the late Mr Adams - but you get the idea.


The flight from Sydney to Perth is four and a half hours with a favourable wind, the Asian cities are nearer than the Aussie ones and even the nearest Aussie capital, Adelaide, is over 2000km away; this is apparently the most isolated major city in the world. Western Australia covers a third of the continent, so we're going to think reasonable in our 2 and a bit remaining weeks and go for a small tour round the bottom corner.


Perth is a very smart clean city with a mellow attitude and some stunning beaches a short train ride away; yesterday we went to Cottesloe which has glorious white sand, clean Indian Ocean rollers and plenty of room for all. You can get a day ticket for the entire city public transport system for under three pounds, the central bits are free, it is about 30 degrees and sunny...you can see why people like it here!


Going back to Sydney, you may have the impression that we didn't do much except admire the views and do some gentle strolls; and you'd be right. We did enjoy our Friday evening Manly ferry ride with all the commuters; as it is summer the water was busy with racing yachts and there were a couple of near-misses with the ferry. One boat was appropriately called 'Clewless' but the one that got the loudest derisive cheer from the ferry passengers was the one boldly labelled 'Australian Army Sailing Club'. This was clearly visible as they wobbled about uncomfortably close to the ferry, let's hope they got themselves sorted before the huge tanker behind us came through!Andy has gone for some bushwalking today but I think it's far too hot for that, so I'm going to the riverfront to admire the view and perhaps go up the belltower, which apparently contains the bells from St Martin in the Fields. Hopefully it's snorkelling on Rottnest island tomorrow and then we'll be off for our little tour. Back to the UK in three and a half weeks, another trip has just whizzed by.

lots of love and koalas
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