Week 1 - 16th Nov – 26th Nov

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We touched down at 1840 on Thursday 16th November and were actually quite glad that we didn’t walk into a furnace! The temperature was around 22c and cloudy, which at least meant that there was no shock to the system. Flying with Emirates was great - the first flight had around 200 spare seats, so we could stretch out and have a nice comfortable flight. The second flight, from Dubai, was a bit more cramped but it passed pretty quickly.

We got into our accommodation, had something to eat and a few beers then crashed out. I woke up around 5am wide awake and just lied there until about 8am unable to sleep at all, so got up to go and check out the city. We went into a clothes shop and got offered a job refitting two of their other units elsewhere in the city. Tom and I had agreed that we’d take whatever came along, and took them up on their offer of 5 days’ work; Monday to Friday the following week. It was cash-in-hand and we figured that it wouldn’t do any harm to get stuck in after just a few days. Besides, it’s the kind of stuff that I used to do quite a bit at Homebase, so it would be second nature. We spent Friday night on the beers with a whole load of people from the hostel. The crowd wasn’t as big a mixture of nationalities as I had expected - rather overrun with Irish labourers and plenty of English people too. But we had a laugh and Saturday was spent sleeping ‘til 1630, recovering!

On Sunday we watched the Red Bull Air Race from the banks of the river. Before the race they had a display from some of the Air Force’s jets. Not sure what they were, but they were doing afterburners and everything right over the city - cool! One of their transporter planes did a few circuits too, which wasn’t all that exciting. I suppose it’s the difference between watching Formula 1 and watching a bus! But then it did some tactical low-flying stuff right over the crowds, doing some pretty cool manoeuvres before climbing again to release some parachutists. Then the Red Bull Air Race started and that was awesome. Unbeknown to us, we were stood about 100m from where they were taking off. Out of the blue right behind me this crazy guy takes off and launches into a barrel roll about 50 feet off the ground and just kept on climbing and rolling it for what seemed like forever! The race was seriously cool - those guys pull some crazy stunts - it’s unreal.

After getting a bit to eat, we went just down the coast to Cottesloe - nice beach and stuff. It’s really quiet there during the week but it kicks off on Sundays, so Tom and I, along with another English guy called Mark, thought we’d go and do recce to see whether it would be worth going back to the following Sunday. The main bar there was really cool with a shed load of people (most of which were incredibly hot I might add!), all having a great time. We stayed there for a few beers and came back to Perth - didn’t want to be too hungover for work the next day.

We were picked up at 11am, as promised, and drove over to the first shop. It turned out that the woman who was the shop manager was seriously disorganised - she expected us to empty a 40 foot shipping container full of clothes and get it all on the shelves in a day. They were actually expecting to open the next day!! Yeah right! In the middle of the day, the jet lag started to kick in and we were totally knackered. We went on ‘til around 1900 then got taken home. At that point, we decided that we would do half of the next day and sack off the rest of the week - we were simply too knackered to do a full week after only arriving a few days previously, and besides we had our own stuff which we needed to do.

Perth’s a great city but it has to be said that there isn’t a great deal to see. We quickly realised that we needed to get our bank accounts and tax file numbers (TFNs) set up, buy a car and get on the road. The bank told us that we’d have to wait 5-7 working days for our cards to come through, which was a bit of a pain as we wanted to get away sooner than that. And because we’re rubbish at getting this admin kind of stuff done, we still hadn’t got round to doing our TFNs. We had been told that it was a simple process that could be done online, however we now know that we have to get the paperwork sent through to a specified address, which takes another week!

Nothing much happened on Wednesday, but on Thursday I went to Rottnest Island with two of the guys from in the hostel - Anders from Sweden and Jens from Denmark; both really good blokes. Tom didn’t join us as he had got hammered the night before! Rottnest Island is about 11km long and 4km wide and is a one-and-a-half hour ferry ride due west of Perth. It’s basically a pretty island with lots of cool beaches and protected wildlife, especially marine. The island was busier than usual because of all the school leavers - that’s where all the kids go to party after they’ve finished school. So it was overrun with 18-year-olds getting pissed! Brilliant! We hired some bikes and cycled round it, stopping at some of the beaches for a swim and stuff before getting the ferry back at 1600. today was also the day of my shave for however long I decide to be in the possession of a beard! Hopefully I’ll keep it until at least Christmas!

On Thursday, the three of us went to Kings Park, which offers great views over the city and Swan River. There were so many people running and doing exercise; wherever there was a staircase leading somewhere, you would see people running up and down, keeping fit. Quite cool to see actually - Perth’s definitely full of fit people!

By this time, Tom and I were getting itchy feet and had started to consider our options with regard to buying a vehicle of some sort. It quickly dawned on us that our budget of $2000 wouldn’t be enough to get the kind of vehicle we wanted. We would definitely need 4wd in order that we could go a bit off the beaten track and a campervan would probably be the best choice. So we’ve ended up buying a Toyota LiteAce van from Anders, Jens and another Swedish girl called Olsa for $3900 - about £1600. They’ve put lots of extras in their like a fridge, extra fuel tanks, extra water tanks, camping chairs, sleeping bags, gas stove, fishing gear, water cooler, solar shower and cooking stuff. It’s in good condition and they just spent $600 on getting it checked over by a mechanic and getting it re-registered. So the plan is to get on the road and head down south to get some farm work of some sort for a week or so. Anders is coming with us as he wants to do the same kind of stuff as us and has just changed his ticket to extend his stay. He’s a cool guy that used to be in the Swedish Army, so lots of good stuff to talk about! We’re planning on heading to Margaret River first to work, then we’ll have to come back to Perth to collect our bank cards and TFN stuff. There really is no fixed plan, but I’d quite like to see as much of the south west as we can before heading north.

We’re looking forward to getting out of Perth as soon as we can. We should be on the road tomorrow, once we’ve sorted our stuff out, including our insurance. Then we can get on with doing what we came here to do - seeing Australia and just having a laugh! Hopefully the cricket’s going to improve a bit. It really wouldn’t be cool if the first test was the precedent for the whole series!

All-in-all, first impressions of Australia are highly favourable! It’s incredibly relaxed and chilled-out. The only thing that’s more expensive is the beer - bugger!

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