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Published: November 20th 2006
The eagles have landed, the eggs are in the nest, the package has been delivered !! Whatever way you wish to say we hae arrived, then say it. Our mission has been accomplished and we are now in Australia, the other side of the planet, home of surfing, kangaroos, koalas and barbecues. And sun !!
Our arrival in Perth was a bit of a mixed bag of emotions to be honest, once we had been ferried in comparitive luxury by Malaysian Airlines into the country, we were a wee bit disappointed that our pals were not there to meet us. They were on the other side of the country after all, but it was still a bit weird seeing folk being met by friends and families and us just standing there looking a bit lost to be honest. Coupled wiit the fact that it appeared that we had landed in Perth, Scotland judging by the temperature, it was a bit of an anticlimax in a way. That was only for a split second though, Lee got her head round the fact that we were in Oz and sprinted out the terminal to set her feet properly on Australian soil for
the first time. Once this emotional ceremony had been carried out, Lee's next action was to decimate the leaflet stand in the terminal building, appropriately enough looking not unlike a tasmanian devil, scattering children and pensioners alike. Just as well we had already arrrived because Lee increased our baggage by about 5 kilos in paper in about 5 minutes flat.
We had booked an appartment we had found on the net in Scarborough Beach which is about 10 minutes by train from Perth city. We only had a week in Scarborough Beach so our accommodation was a bit nice to be honest, our own seperate lounge, a bathroom that Colin and Justin would go "Ooooooooooooooh, ithn't thith gooooooooorgeouth" at, and an equally nice bedroom. No bad for a couple of backpackers like us eh ??
Scarborough is cool, it's basically a commuter town for Perth but it seems to be where the surfers all hang out so it's really chilled out. We had a magic wee deli just down the road from us so we could eat well while we were there and the beach was a 15 minute walk away so all was good.
One wee
thing about Oz that is going to take some gettiing used too, is that if you want to grab your dinner and a bottle of wine, you need to go to a seperate shop for your wine. What's that all about ????? We were under the impression that this was a progressive, western country, but I gues not. The "Bottle Shops" are also drive-thru, you hand your order to the guys behind the counter and they run off and get it for you. I see problems ahead for the Aussie traffic police.
When we got to our appartment on the Sunday, the owners were not around as they do not work on Sundays. We should have recieved an e-mail from the company we booked through that detailed the code for the key cabinet but thiis never arrived so it was a good half an hour before a couple from the Gold Coast arrived aand let us in. We took a walk to the beach and made our way back for dinner and crashed out the rest of the night.
Monday we took a walk back down to the beach and had a proper look at the place, until
we found a wee bar that enabled me to have the first Pint of lager and Lee to have the first glass of proper wine of our trip. It was magic. Unfortunately, it was also far too easy to stay and have a few more. The first guy we ran into there though was a boy from Glasgow who had moved out there with his girlfriend about a year ago and he was able to let us know about stuff like the best way to get around and also how to use the phonecards, which had baffled us since our arrival. They were like a BT version of the Rubiks Cube, but not BT, ach, you know what I mean !!
We decided to take a trip into Perth the next day and see what the fuss was all about, not many of the people we had spoken to before coming away had been to Perth as it is such a long distance from anywhere else in the country. Even U2 cancelled a gig here as it was too far away from anywhere else. Or that was probably the reason.
Perth is a really relaxed place to be,
no-one seems to be in a rush, even at lunchtime in the city centre and it suited us down to the ground. The city centre is much like any other, loads of shops and cafes and we weren't really in the mood for shopping so we headed off down to the harbour to have a look round. Once more, Lee found herself in leaflet heaven and by the end of her little spree, we had booked ourselves on a whale watching trip on the Wednesday and a wine tour on the Thursday. Seeing as we had exhausted ourselves, well not ourselves, but our debit card really, we retired to The Lucky Shag bar for lunch and a wee refreshment. For any youngsters reading, the shag is a seabird that is often seen around here. Just to clear that up. Our lunch and refreshments turned into an all afternoon pool tournament and finished off in a lovely wee tapas bar for dinner.
Needless to say, the next day was spent nursing a hangover and working our way through the appartments extensive DVD collection (we had also been furnished with a TV, DVD player and stereo in our appartment). We had
dinner at the appartments and then had a couple of beers with the couple that had let us in when we arrived and spent that rest of the evening by the pool that was out in the apppartments Mediteranean courtyard chatting to them. They were great company and they have invited us up to use their house if we are near the Gold Coast at any time which was really nice of them and we may take up their offer later in our trip.
Since Lee and I have been planning our trip, one of the things we wanted to do was go a see the whales that make their way down the west coast to the colder waters in the south each year. We grabbed a taxi to Hilary's harbour the next day and jumped aboard the boat we had booked in Perth earlier in the week. We were informed it could take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour before we spotted any whales, but in the end it took about an hour and a half of sailing to come accross any. Once we did see them though, they are pretty breathtaking to watch. They are quite
difficult to photograph (proof is displayed here) but getting this close up to them is one of those once-in-a-lifetime things that this trip was all about. Unless we do it again. Then it will be twice in a lifetime. We were watching a mother and calf mucking about and that was great but every so often you would see other whales doing their big leaps (this is called a breach) out of the water way up ahead, just to give it that "Ooooooooohhhhhh, aaaaaaaaaahhhhh" factor which is a nice touch. Well worth the money and something that we'll probably never forget.
Unfortunately the next day, Lee had been knocked flaat out by her alllergies for some reason and was basically unable to get out of bed, this meant that we had to cancel the wine tour and as it was within 24 hours of the trip, we lost our money, but it did mean that Lee didn't have to climb on a bus with 20 strangers and watch us all drink our way up the Swan Valley wineries and breweries while Lee had fresh orange all day. Can you imagine her face :- )
When we had first arrived,
we were walking up the steps to the appartment and Lee had asked if I could smell deep heat. It was absolutely honking of the stuff and it turned out to be a Jasmine plant that was at the front door. The day of the wine tour we ran into Denise who was one of the guys that invited us up to the Gold Coast and she asked me why we weren't away up to our eye balls in wine. When I told her about Lee's alllergies, she informed us that there is a Jasmine plant at our front door and when she was a nipper, she and her brother had been hospitalised due to their allergies to jasmine. Turns out that we had our faces buried in the very plant that ruined our wine tour just two days earlier. Oh how we laughed. Well I laughed, Lee sneezed mainly.
We managed to book ourself a flight to Melbourne on the Saturday morning so it meant getting up at half four again so that we could be at the airport in plenty time to check in and get some breakfast but it didn't really matter as we were too
hyped up about seeing David and Nerida again after almost 2 years.
Melbourne is our next stop, will let you know how that goes later on.
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The Broons(Well Big Broon Anyway)
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Great to see the photos and the humorous way you put it all together Graham, sorry I mean, the way both of you put it together :-). When you call there is so much we want to ask but never get round to and this is a great way of catching up. Pier @ Perth Harbour photo, I feel as if a part of me was there G. I've only ever seen Whales v Scotland @ murrayfield ATB xxx