Sleepless in Perth

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Day 216 (27.10.07)

To start the day we went into the city to do part of the walking tour in our book around the sights of Perth. The start of this took us to the Art gallery of Western Australia, near the train station. Neither of us are what you would consider true art buffs however there was a really interesting section on aboriginal art (one painting in particular that we took time to sit down and make up a convoluted story and meaning behind - nice!)

After this we went through art depicting Western Australia from the British colonial era through to modern day with a particularly amusing visit to the modern art room where we tried and failed to understand the work that had gone into some of the 'pictures' - big blue square and black square with a yellow border were specific favourites.

From here we took a wind buffeted walk around some of Perth's sights and architecture of note ending up at the Barrack Street Jetty and the modern Swan bell tower which houses bells from St Martins in the Fields in London. Perth is a lovely relaxed city but we were both surprised to feel a little bit of what I suppose you'd call reverse culture shock. After months in Asia it felt odd having everything at your fingertips again and it took us a little while to get used to.

We were considering hiring a car for a day's road trip north so the afternoon was spent looking into hiring options only to completely change our plans at the last minute after speaking to a very helpful lady at Trailfinders.

We grabbed a few more bits for tea and then headed back to our hostel for dinner and a movie. The hostel is full of people working in the area who have been around for weeks/months and formed cliques of friends so we found it not as welcoming as others we've stayed in. Our dormmates had had and some were still having a drinking party in our room (strictly forbidden by the hostel owners!) and so we chatted to them for a while and then hoped we'd be able to catch some sleep pretty soon (we sound old don't we?!). Things escalated a little until at 4am we still hadn't had any sleep and the guy from the hostel came to report complaints from other guests only to be given a mouthful of abuse by one particular girl. After repeated attempts by him to get her to go to bed and shut up he asked her to pack and leave the hostel. She proceeded to throw her things around the room and verbally abuse everyone in the room until eventually at around 7am the hostel guy did as he had threatened and got the Police to come and make sure she left. After a night with not a wink of sleep it was actually extremely amusing and a huge relief to hear her f and blind at the coppers and see her being taken away in handcuffs for a stint in the local lock-up. Having given up on sleep completely we decided to go for some breakfast. What a night!

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