Western Australia
June 22nd, 2007 by 
thewoz
The journey from Singapore to Perth was littered with a number of minor annoyances, delays and frustrations. I blame about half of the problems on the Dali Lamar. I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but his arrival at Perth airport at the same time as me meant I was stuck there for nearly 2 hours. Long story.. Check out picture I took of him blocking the route to the cash machine.
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| From Western Australia |
By the time I actually arrived in the city, it was dark and I hadn’t booked myself any accommodation yet, so I had to find a place in the dark. Anyway once I found a Hostel, I and walked into the 12-bed dorm and my heart sank. I thought, oh god, I’m not sure I can handle living in these kind of conditions even for a single night and this is only day 1 of 80. It was late by now, I was tired, jet-lagged and miserable and I felt like I needed to either go straight to sleep or go out and do something that would change my mood. So I went out and got drunk.
By the time a returned to the hostel, I felt a little more socialable. It was full of the usual inner-city hostel crowd. People just coming in to Western Australia, people about to leave kids taking the casual work to afford them a trip round Australia, people that have spent too long travelling that they really have lost all sense of reality, people like me and the obligatory freaks, perverts and weirdoes and everyone in between.
The next day, I wandered round Perth, drinking an inordinate amount of coffee and sucking up the sights of the city. In my opinion, the city itself isn’t all that. Everything shuts down at 5pm and even the Northbridge area, apparently the best place to go out in Perth in an evening just seemed to lack soul. The best thing about Perth was the looking down upon the city and the river from Kings Park.
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| From Western Australia |
Early the next morning I took the train to Fremantle, the bustling seaside town just down the road form Perth. I wasn’t too disappointed to be leaving the city, and was enjoying the train journey listening to some phat tunes on my new MP3 player when I accidently made eye contact with the weird old guy getting on the train. So naturally he came and sat next to me. I thought I’d be able to escape conversation by just keeping my headphones on and staring into oblivion, but of course he had other ideas. He nudged me and I was obliged to remove my headphones. “Looks like you’re travelling around. Where you from?” he asks. “England” I reply. “I went to England in the 50’s. Beautiful place it was. Beautiful place. Course, it’s all different now. Full of blacks, aint it.”.
Oh dear. An uncomfortable 15 minutes later, I arrived in Fremantle. As I walked through town to my Hostel, I thought, “yeah, this place is pretty f’in cool”. I dumped my bags and headed out to the stunning traffic-free Rottnest Island for the day. Once I got to the Island, I jired a bike and started exploring. The guy at the Bike shop said it would take me arounf 3.5 hours to cycle around the whole Island which I naturally took that to be a challenge.
I cycled my ass-off and smashed got round the whole Island in just over 3 hours. I spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach and played with the Quaokkas,
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| From Western Australia |
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| From Western Australia |
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| From Western Australia |
In the evening I met up with Jota, my Australian friend who I met in Canada. Dispite the fact we were skiing in Whistler just weeks ago, it fely like I hadn’t seen her in ages.
That night I had a copuple of new cultutal experiences including drinking an alcoholic ginger beer (which surely makes much more sense) and the Tim-Tam in tea ritual. Apparantly you can now get Timtams in the UK. It’s a bit like a Penguin but better. The “done” thing is to bit off diagonally opposite corners and suck your tea through the Tim Tam, like throw the whole thing in your mouth before it disintegrates. Bloofy lovely.
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| From Western Australia |
The next day Jota picked we up and we went to the beach. Later she coersed me into jumped into the water and it was so incredibly cold. If you look at the photo closely enough you can probably see me scream.
I stayed with Jota and her family for my last couple of nights in Perth. We got smashed on Saturday night. We reminised of Whistler nights with the potent Jeiger-bombs and I rather embarrassingly beat all of her mates at pool. We ended up in the club designed almost identically to the Colchester Hippodrome (thankfully it was far better and there was an awesome live band in one of the upstrairs rooms) rather the the usual blend of prog euro trance )or whatever the hell crap the kids listen to these days. Actually the live music scene on Fremantle was very good. It made me wonder why Australian music seldom makes it to the international stage, After AC/DC, Savage Garden, Jet and the entire cast and crew of Neighbours through the years, I’m struggling to think of any.
On my last full day on Western Australia, we went to Cottesloe and Scarborough beac, I had the best pint ever; “little creatures” in the pub that brews it on-site. If you can find it anywhere in the UK, buy the little Creatures Pale Ale. The evening ended in a bonfire in the back garden and a Sunday roast. Beautiful.
On Monday morning Jota dropped me at the airport. Luckily the Dahli Lama had already buggered off.
Posted in Travel Blog 2007 | 
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