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Published: February 20th 2010
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8.9.09 - 18.9.09
Perth WA
After a 10 hour overnight flight with South African airlines we landed in Perth and were looking forward to getting to the nearest and cheapest hostel to ditch our bags before heading to the nearest pristine beach for some real r&r. Sadly the wait would be dragged out by some time due to Australia’s rigorous border control which needed to x-ray our bags, examine our shoes and cross check left, right, left again and then centre. Finally and after some hours from departing our plane we were on Australian soil and jumped on a shuttle bus to our backpackers to ditch our bags and take a brief walk of the city before heading to bed, the beach would have to wait until we weren’t so knackered!
Before we could even start acting like tourists and spending money we decided that our first port of call was to sort out jobs in order to boost our ever dwindling savings, so we made haste to the nearest job shops and declared ourselves ready to pick fruit, wait tables or do whatever it is British backpackers have to do to earn a buck.
After a week
we looked at alternatives to staying in a hostel and scoured the notice boards of hostels and other backpacker affiliated places for room’s available to rent short term, most were after at least a month up front but one guy did seem willing to entertain the idea of allowing us to stay for a couple of weeks and go from there if we secured work so we agreed to visit his place to take a look around.
This one hour long visit to check out a flat will go down as one of the more surreal moments on our travels.
Upon arriving about five minutes early we were greeted by a six foot something bald Egyptian looking he-man type character sporting wrap around sunglasses and one of those beards that appears to say “I‘m a lover of all gods creature, hence the reason I‘ve allowed this black caterpillar time to rest on my chin”, all of this was topped off by the fact that he was wearing skin tight leggings, a very baggy tshirt and a baseball cap, two thing immediately went through my head, either he’s in witness protection or a drug dealer.
He showed us around
?
dont know what the hell this was supposed to be. the place and explained we would have the upstairs quarters since he lived downstairs, everything was very gold and marble with tacky water feature’s in the garden and a small glass table in the centre of the room which we assumed was used for cutting coke (at this point we‘d decided he wasn‘t in witness protection), when he’d finished showing us around, his cat, one of two very expensive Persians came out to say hello, to which Michelle (who is a a big fan of all creatures fluffy or slivery) replied by saying hello back, this clearly vexed our would be drug dealer landlord and he insisted on us not coming into contact with the cat since he was training them and couldn’t have another human sending confusing messages to them, we said that wouldn’t be a problem but he insisted that if we did try to “play” with his cat’s and tried to keep it from him then he would know. He was apparently trained in the five levels of consciousness and would know if we’d stroked his cat and therefore have to evict us. So now we had the tough decision to make as to whether we would
Swan Barraks
second hostel we stayed in in Perth stay in this boutique house with a egomaniacal, drug dealing, brick shit house who would happily “kick us out” if he thought we’d had the urge to stroke his obnoxious felines.
We decided to remain in hostels.
We played the waiting game and the nearest we’d come to landing any sort of work was at a “British” pub who advertised as looking for two bar folk for at least three months, this wasn’t something we could commit to since we we’re wanting to be in Sydney over the Christmas and NY period, however things were getting desperate to the point that I even suggested changing our plans and remain in Perth in order to commit to a job, this idea was quickly brushed under the carpet though.
Within two weeks of landing in a new country we had secured positions at a Dolphin resort ten hours north of Perth called Monkey Mia. They we’re only looking for a dish washer and a waitress but the money was good ($18 an hour) and Michelle was really happy since Monkey Mia was high on her list of places to visit in Western Australia and now we’d both be paid
to work there whist enjoying the beach and countless friendly dolphins that visited there daily.
We could now see out the remaining few days in Perth by being tourists and we did that by taking a ferry to south Perth to get a view of the city from a distance and also by visiting Freemantle and taking the Freemantle twilight prison tour which was good fun and offered a few scary surprises, we would be coming back to Freemantle at a later date to experience the nightlife since its known for being one of the more culturally and artistically minded places in oz.
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About time
Finally you've decided to tell us about the smack loving egyptian! Haha love it :)