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Rach The morning after a final and very jolly Saturday night binge with Helen and Philip at the restaurant “Taxi” in the centre of Melbourne, we bid a fond goodbye to the city and headed for the airport, bound for Perth and the welcoming fold of another McCahy scion, this time Ian’s Cousin Carol.
Ian and I stepped into arrivals to be met by Carol and her hubby Paul. They whisked us home, where tea and biscuits were swiftly followed by the arrival of a bottle of something lovely to wash down an impromptu cheese plate. Thus our appetite was sharpened for a lovely sea food dinner which Carol magic’d up for us in the evening. Ah, the homely pleasures of descending on decent working folk and making them overly tired for their Monday morning! Carol and Paul live in Daniela, which is a suburb of Perth, not far from the centre at all. They share their home with Molly the cat, who is beautiful, underweight and on drugs; cat valium, to be exact. As was pointed out to us, this practically qualifies her to date Pete Doherty.
Carol very kindly entrusted a set of house keys
Rachy in downtown Perth
Just to prove we were really there! to us the next morning. So, whilst she and Paul went to work, and whilst Molly attended to her daily feline routine, we raided our hosts larder for breakfast, and eventually left the house, ready to take on Perth’s public transport system. About half an hour later we successfully arrived by bus in the central business district, where we performed a general inspection of the amenities, and had a light lunch. As we usually do on arrival in a new locale, we retrieved several bushels of tourist brochures from the visitor information centre, and finally, we sought the correct bus stop for our return journey, a journey which became memorable after the driver was forced to eject an unruly passenger, and the summoning of the police. (It was fabulous. We had a great view of the contretemps, and the presence of the constabulary gave everyone full license to stare.)
Because Ian had been banging on about the lack of decent bitter in Australia, Paul had risen to the challenge, and planned a night for us at a local pub-slash-micro brewery which he and Carol frequent. Even that Shiraz devotee Carol was tempted from the grape to the hop for the evening, and indeed the food and the brews all went down extremely well with everyone. In the merry glow of the evening, I thought how nice it was to be amongst family again for a while. Carol and Ian reminisced; there were anecdotes of long passed holidays, tales of distant relatives, and sharing of old, common memories. We had too much to drink, inevitably, and so back at home we embarked on that common fool’s errand - an attempt at a post-pub game of Trivial Pursuit. We were more coherent than might have been expected, but it didn’t take many pies before eyelids and intellects sagged pathetically.
Our lovely hosts had booked a day off for the next morning - and we all trooped off for a trip to The Swan River area, where (would you believe?) wineries with facilities for tastings and sales are located. Why they thought we’d be interested in any of that is beyond me. Not only did we have to sample one wine after the other, but the only thing to break the monotony was a visit to a chocolate factory. Good grief!
As an aside, I would like to recount a little funny which Ian made en route: Many place names in this part of the world have the suffix ‘up’, meaning water, according to Paul. There’s Yallingup, Meelup and Cowaramup, for instance. Anyway, when we passed the site of a local women’s prison, Ian said “Oh look, it’s Bang ‘em up!”. This I found amusing.
Anyway, back at home in the evening, all souls were drawn to a night round the TV, to watch films and generally to collapse into a comfortable exhaustion. It was most pleasant. All in all, it felt wonderful to be looked after and spoiled by those two, and after more than a week being in the company of various cousins now, it will probably feel a bit lonely when we are back on the road alone again.
However, we had to push on. Western Australia is still a stranger to us. Our foray into central Perth was a short one: According to Carol, Perth has a “big, small-town” feel. Admittedly, it did seem a tiddler after Sydney and Melbourne, and pleasant though it is, I felt it had neither Sydney’s handsome profile nor Melbourne’s funkier, honest vibe. So, although Ian said he was impressed, I didn’t share the sentiment very much. (Although it goes without saying that any town has merit if it is without the same-old-same-old high street chains and global names which infest the UK.) My travels thus far in the southern hemisphere have confirmed my inkling: I like cities here if they are big, and I like the countryside if it is countrified. Perth sort of falls between the two stools, for me.
Anyway, news of our voyage south follows in the Margaret River blog.
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