After spending a whole weekend together, you'd think we'd be keen to have some time to ourselves, but not so! Instead we arranged that me & Matt would meet Claire & Laura at Cottesloe beach on Monday and that Luke & James would join us when they finished work! Unfortunately, Laura was feeling really poorly (which later developed into full blown flu with her laid up all week!) so it was just the 3 of us at the beach until Luke joined us. Claire & Matt both enjoyed going in the sea, Claire just for a little dip while Matt spent quite a few hours practising his body surfing skills, at first on his own and then with Luke! The waves got pretty big so Matt was having a great time and it gave us some entertainment watching him get bashed about and knocked off his feet by the big waves. In the meantime, I topped up my tan and read some of my book and then when Claire came out of the sea we had a lovely time chatting, gossiping and generally being girls!! 
 
Matt & I had decided that, after a pretty expensive weekend, we really needed to cut our outgoings for a few days and make the most of the free food on offer at the hostel . This is when I discovered my love of super noodles as despite going to Uni and spending 5 weeks in Malaysia, I had never tried them yet had convinced myself I didn't like them! I have seriously been missing out as the ones at the hostel are delicious!! While we were eating, we were entertained by an American guy who had checked into the hostel with his Dad and was a singer/songwriter. His songs were hilarious and included 'Vegetarian Girl', 'Blonde Fuss' and our favourite 'The Titty Song'. On paper, these songs actually aren't very good but throw in his Nevada accent and his showmanship and they became amazing!!! Matt almost joked at one point that he would be bringing out copies of his CD for sale later but thankfully he bit his tongue as, low and behold, half an hour later, out came his CDs!!!!
 
On Tuesday, Matt & I popped into the city for a spot of shopping and to buy our tickets to Rottnest Island and a basketball game. Once we had successfully completed these jobs, we made our way back to the hostel where Claire & Luke met us for a glass of the bottle of rosé we had bought at Margaret River & some of the sandwiches & pastries from Charlie's bakery run . A bit later on, we made our way down to the cinema in Northbridge to watch the 18:45 showing of The Impossible. As expected, I cried through a lot of the film but I thought it was very delicately handled and well portrayed. After walking Claire & Luke to the train station, we headed back to hostel for an early night as we had an extremely early start in the morning!
 
Our alarms were set for 'very early' on Wednesday morning and we were very excited to be going to Rottnest Island!! Matt's earlier than mine as he got up at 3am again to watch Arsenal play this time. Only for them to lose 3-1 though! First we had to walk to Claisebrook station and catch a train from there to Fremantle (we were glad we did this rather than walk to Perth Central as when we pulled in there the crowds were huge you could hardly see the station with so many people so we never would have gotten on!). From Fremantle station, we then had a short walk to the ferry terminal at B Shed, where our ferry departed at 9:30am. After a very pleasant crossing, we arrived at Rottnest at approximately 10:15 and made our way to the bicycle collection point to pick up our mode of transport for the day! Once fully decked out with bike & helmet, we were off!!!

It turns out that this island used to be used as an Aboriginal prison between 1838 & 1902, with Thomson Bay being the oldest settlement, dating back to 1840 . But due to its poor conditions for the prisoners and its scenic beauty & rich bird life, it became a protected area in 1917 and is now a popular tourist destination. There are roads going round the island but no private cars are allowed so these are purely for bikes, the hop on hop off bus and the cleaners' vans. 
 
Apart from Matt's little bike ride in Cairns, neither of us have been on a bike for a lot of years so we were a bit cautious at first with so many people around. Before we'd even left the harbour we spotted a massive pelican sat on top of the street lamp, the size of it was incredible! There weren't many people taking their chances and walking underneath him!!!! We'd decided to go round the island in an anti-clockwise direction to try and get some of the cycling out of the way first so we could have a swim and relax later on as it takes about 3 and a half hours to get round the whole island without stopping. We were quickly enjoying our cycling and soon came across the first beach: The Basin and Bathurst Lighthouse . After about 30 minutes on the road, we started to look for a place to have a swim as the sun was out now and it was very hot. An older couple had pointed us down a steep hill and said that there was a lovely spot at Parakeet Bay. They weren't wrong either as the water was beautiful and clear and it a lovely empty beach. After a swim and a sandwich we hit the bikes again. Only now we had a steep hill to get up to get back to the main road. As Matt rode up and waited at the top, I decided that was never gonna happen so I walked up, much to his amusement, but even walking up was hard work!
 
We stopped at a lookout to see City of York Bay which was named after Rottnest's most tragic shipwreck. In 1899, a sea captain mistook a lighthouse flare for a pilot's signal and headed towards the rocks. You can still see part if the wreck sticking out of the water!
 
As we carried on round, the road was getting more and more hilly. This was nice on the downhills but not so nice going up. The sun was really out in full force now as well and there was nowhere to hide from it . So by the time we had got nearly halfway round the island, we both were getting extremely hot so had to go for a swim break again. Luckily the next beach, Stark Bay, was even more beautiful than where we had stopped before. We both parked our bikes and quickly dived in, taking our time more this time to have a little swim and take some photos. The water was so cool and relaxing, there were also a few people snorkelling and paddle boarding off the boats moored up. After relaxing for a while and having lunch we noticed we now only had 2 hours to get back to the harbour as our ferry left at 4:30pm, the only problem was, we were probably easily an hour away maybe even an hour and a half. This didn't give us much time to see the other half of the island!
 
We headed straight back to the harbour area at Thomson Bay stopping only for a few photos on the way to make sure we definitely got back in time. This was proving more difficult than we expected though as it was easily 38 degrees now with clear skies and we had already run out of water . As you've heard before, I tend to struggle in these situations but somehow we keep ending up in them! We were both so hot and this half was far more hilly than the first half. By now I had a terrible headache and even Matt was struggling with dehydration, both of us had achy legs and bums but we were nowhere near getting back still. Matt had to hold on to my crossbar and ride his bike whilst pulling mine up the hills in the end as they were getting so hard. We even joked about how this was Matt in dad mode except it should be a child he's pulling along on a bike. After about an hour of struggling we stopped to look at a big map next to the road to see how much further we had to go. As Matt was actually talking about going without me to get water and come back suddenly he spotted a water fountain. To say he threw his bike to the floor is probably an understatement. We filled our bottles and almost showered in this little fountain, we felt so relieved to have seen it!
 
Feeling a bit revived, we made it back to the town about 15 minutes later where we quickly ditched our bikes and bought juice and ice cream and flaked out in the shade . It looked like we weren't the only ones as several other groups of rather hot sweaty people sat with ice creams and drinks as well. We'd made it back with 40 minutes to spare which gave us time to cool off before our ferry left.
 
The one disappointing fact about the day was that we didn't manage to spot any quokkas! These are actually a type of wallaby, although when Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh first visited Rottnest in 1696, he spotted these animals that are somewhat bigger than a cat, with dark fur and mistook them for a species of rat, calling the island 'the rats' nest' after them! Although there is a small population of them on mainland Western Australia, this is the best place to spot one, but usually around dusk so that's why we didn't see any!
 
We left Rottnest at 16:25 and were back in Fremantle by 5ish. After getting the train back to Perth and then walking back to the hostel, we were in desperate need of showers and food! Charlie had planned to do a BBQ but at the last minute he changed his mind! Thankfully Sirio, an Italian guy staying at the hostel, came to the rescue and cooked us all a delicious pasta meal! We went to bed very worn out that night and dreading the aches and pains that we knew were inevitable in the morning!
 
Matt was very excited that the day had arrived that he was finally going to get to see his first Australian basketball game! But that wasn't until 19:10 so he still had all day to wait, much to his dismay! We made our way into the city as we had heard the Western Australian Museum really was worth a visit, and we weren't disappointed! First we visited the Discovery Centre and spent ages walking round looking at and handling lots of exhibits (my favourite new fact is that sea jellies - you're not allowed to call them jellyfish anymore apparently! - have no brain, no blood, no heart but 64 bottoms?!?!) before heading to the Diamonds to Dinosaurs exhibit which was fascinating . We kicked ourselves for not coming sooner as we didn't have enough time to get all the way round the museum and had to skip the Aboriginal display which people in the hostel had said was particularly interesting. 
 
We had to leave when we did as we had arranged to meet Matt's friend Danny again & his dad (Derek) for drinks at Moon & Sixpence at 15:30. This proved to be a very beneficial get together as both Danny and Derek are very well connected in their field of work, which just happens to be the same as Matt's so we came away with some good contacts and potential jobs! It was also lovely to see Danny again before we move on and for Matt to catch up with Derek who he worked under during a particularly memorable job in Holland!
 
At about 6pm we made our way to Perth Arena (via Hungry Jacks where I was very excited to claim my free fries from my new app I had downloaded!) and met Claire, Luke, Nick & Becca (2 new people from the hostel!). Crazily, Nick went to the same school as Luke & Claire back in Leicester and Nick was only the year above them so knew some of the same people, small world! We made our way to our seats armed with our clappers ready to cheer on the Perth Wildcats as they took on the Melbourne Tigers! After lots of cheerleaders and basketball skills, we weren't disappointed as the final score saw Perth win 78-58!!! 
 Let's go Wildcats, let's go!!!
 
We had no plans for Friday, so we decided to go back to the Western Australian Museum and visit the exhibitions we hadn't had time to see the day before, which was the Underwater exhibit, Animals exhibit and Aboriginal history exhibit . All of which were fascinating in their own way. The underwater one because it's incredible to imagine that all of those things live in the sea, the animals one because of the skeletons and preserved animals thanks to a very talented taxidermist and the aboriginal one because it portrayed their plight in an honest manner without feeling like they were preaching or laying blame.
 
After our cultural experience, we popped to a few shops as there were a few things I needed to buy ready for Matt's birthday party before returning to the hostel (via the bottle shop) to set my plans into action! I enlisted the help of Mel & Ryan to blow up 30 balloons and Mel helped me cut up the rocky road I had baked (yes, I mean bought!) earlier so it said '30' before shutting Matt in our room while we put the balloons up and hid the cake in the fridge! When we were all set, we let him out and once Laura, James, Claire & Luke arrived, we handed out the party hats and blowers to really get the party started! It didn't take long for the beer and wine to get flowing and everyone was having a brilliant time with a little bit of light hearted karaoke going on . Then, my greatest achievement started... Fireworks!!!! Ok I hadn't really planned this but as a stroke of luck, the race course nearby happens to have fireworks every Friday night so with Matt not aware of this, I lucked out and he thought I was amazing!!!!!
 
At about 10pm, we decided to head into the city, so ordered some taxis to take us to Mustangs in Northbridge! This was our first proper nightclub experience in Australia so it was novel having to hand over our passports and have our photos taken by security before we could enter! It also made us a little nervous as to what they thought might happen that they would need such high security!
We had an absolutely brilliant night, dancing and drinking! Poor Matt was well and truly stitched up by Ryan, Luke & James who ordered him a huge range of drinks which he had to down (or 'skull' as they prefer to say over here!) and Mel & I managed to keep our party hats on the whole night which we were very proud of! By about 2am, it was becoming clear that everyone had probably had more than enough to drink so we made our way to the exit and went our separate ways! Somehow, Mel & I were the last Wickhamers standing so we had the delightful task of getting Matt home in one piece! Despite him zig zagging most of the way and disappearing for a wee in the bush, we did get back safely and while Matt sat feeling rather worse for wear and looking like he was going to fall asleep in his roll, Mel & I polished off a huge sandwich each and lots of water! Eventually, we headed for bed where about 30 minutes later I was eternally grateful that Mel had suggested I take a bucket for Matt as he rolled off the edge of the bed, landed on his knees with his head in the bucket and ...... (You don't need me to spell it out!!!!) I'd say he had a pretty good birthday night out wouldn't you?!?!?!?!
 
HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY MATT!!!!!!!! Xx
 After not getting to bed until nearly 4am, it was no surprise that we had a much needed lay in on Saturday! What is surprising though is that Matt slept right through until midday!!!! Even then he only managed to stay awake long enough to open his presents and cards (at my insistence) and have a cup of tea before he fell back to sleep until about 3pm as he said he still felt seriously drunk and was feeling awful! Once he was up though, we made ourselves some noodles and joined everyone else who was nursing a sore head in the kitchen! As the afternoon went on it became clear that Matt couldn't actually remember much of the night so everyone took great pleasure recounting the night, they all had lots of things to laugh about so all in all everyone had a brilliant night! A bit later on Matt was pleased to speak to his Mum and Nanny, then we set about packing for our train journey: you are only supposed to take onto the train the things you need for the few days we are travelling, the rest (up to 20kg each) has to be checked in and you can't access it! This turned into quite a mission but we got there eventually and, as seasoned travellers now, we are quite used to wearing the same clothes for a few days & not showering! Haha!!
 
Once we were all sorted, we made our way out to the garden as Charlie was doing a BBQ . It was a really lovely way to end our time in Perth and a good opportunity to say farewell to all the lovely people we have met and new friends we have made. Laura & James even popped over to say 'See you soon' (James doesn't like the word 'goodbye') on their way back from Laura's graduation. It was quite a sad evening but we will be seeing some of them again in future adventures so it wasn't too bad! Well and truly worn out, we made our way to bed for the final time in Perth (for now anyway!)
 
We want to say a big 'Thank You' to everyone we met in Perth for making it such a memorable experience! We have so many lovely & funny memories to take away and we look forward to seeing you again, wherever & whenever that may be! Xx