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Published: June 24th 2007
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Perth is unbelievably quiet and quite dead, as a matter of fact, for a city of over 1 million inhabitants.
We walked around the city centre on our first day in Australia, amazed at how deserted the streets were
after the hustle and bustle of Asia. Granted it was a Sunday. The other thing that stood out was how damn
expensive everything was - $2 (1.30 euro) for a can of coke, $7 (4.60) for a pint - come on, what's going
on? Well, what's going on is thousands of miles away in a place called the Peoples Republic of China. The
chinese economic boom is causing huge demand for mineral resources globally and Australia is benefiting
from the situation. The huge salaries on offer in the mines to the east of Perth have caused house prices
to triple in the last 5 years, so young Ozzie couples are facing the same problems as their counterparts
in Ireland and Spain. Not just real estate is affected, with inflation soring, prices of basics like veggies
and bread are rising every other week - it was announced on the radio that milk prices are expected to go up
by 25% in one
big leap, so that the dairy farmers can get their share of the pie. Along with a strengthening
ozzie dollar, it makes the continent an unattractive destination for scroungy tourists like ourselves. Worse
was to come when we investigated our plan to hire a camper to go north and take an organized tour of the
remote Kimberley's; we nearly fell off our chairs when the Travel Forever guy quoted us the typical
price. Still, they got us a campervan from Trailmaster, at the cheapest price so far, 76 AUD a day, no one
way fee and a seperate insurance through them for just $88 overall. The Kimberbley tour was 4 times that, at
$300 a day for two, over 9 days! Unbelievable prices and the reason given was the wear and tear of the
vehicles over the trip, with 9 tourists in the vehicle that's a lot of compensation! My friends had done a
similar tour only 4 years previously, but hadn't mentioned such exorbitant prices. It seems these guys are
taking the piss, but places are limited and it is billed as a highlight of any trip to Oz, so we bit the
bullet and coughed up. I will
reserve further comment and judgement until after the tour. In a frenzy of
credit card indulgence we tacked on a local day tour of the Swan valley wineries for $80 each, just to round
the numbers up to 4000 AUD. Not bad for one day's holiday, not work.
Back on the more economical side, the Emperor's Crown has a huge and well equipped kitchen so we did a shop in
Woolworths and attempted to cook for ourselves for the first time in 3 months. Grocery prices were, of course,
shocking. Bananas $8/kg, tomatoes $6/kg, milk $2 a litre. Lots of goods were local produce, but there were
no bargains. Things would only get more expensive the further north you went, with transport costs and remoteness -
lack of alternatives - becoming more and more a factor. I'm typing this 4 weeks after my arrival here and the
prices still knock me out - worse than Ireland? Maybe. It appears to be a similar case of everyone jumping on the
boom bandwagon and prices soaring out of control. I'll stop now and talk about Perth in winter - not that we could
afford to outside the door to experience any of
it, that is. We did make it to Rosie O'Gradys in our own "lively"
district of Northbridge. Tipp was playing Limerick for the third time. There was a Magners cider special, being a
Monday, at only $6.50 a bottle! Australia introduced a smoking ban a year ago and the pub full of Paddys smelt exactly
like back home - feet and farts. Were cigarettes such a bad thing really?
Our tour of the wineries started at 9 with a pickup from our hostel from friendly driver Pete. We were the first on,
but in no time he had rounded up all the other 12 thirsty connaisseurs in his nifty wee bus and since the wineries
only opened at 10 he gave us a little spin around the more affluent parts of Perth. We trundled along near thhe
cricket grounds, the race-track and a posh suburb before whizzing out the road through Guildford and eagerly hopping
out en masse at the first vineyard. Six wines were explained and then the bottles left for us to sample at will -
a great start! The following places weren't so free and easy with the bottles, but with all the little mouthfuls
quickly accumulating
to make us all rather tipsy we all got to know each other and had a great time. Lunch was
included at one winery, where we actually had to buy a few bottles to accompany it - as if we really needed it at
that stage. Only the Australians would think of finishing a wine tasting tour with a visit to a brewery, but that's
what we did and no they weren't finished yet, Pete managed to get us all on the bus before 5 to make our final stop
at the chocolate factory. If it had been a junkfood factory then we would have gone crazy buying, cos we all had the
munchies. A great day out and the warm glow of alcohol and just great craic stayed with us long after we had been
dropped back to the hostel. Speaking of which .... we had changed from our very comfortable, but $80 a night double
room to a mixed 5 person dorm with bathroom, to save $30 a night - 4 beers. We had conversed briefly with our 2
female room-mates and later we ended up running into them separately in The Deen, on Aberdeen street. This was
not
unusual, as each Northbridge pub does a promotion on a different weeknight, so everyone ends up at the same one
while the others are empty. That was grand, so we danced and drank and headed back not too late to the dorm. Our
room-mates came in later when we were half asleep. Sometime later I awoke to what sounded like someone washing clothes, or so my brain logically assumed. What it actually was, was the girl sleeping opposite Agnes had got up half
asleep, sat on the edge of Agnes's bed and proceeded to pee on the floor, thinking she was in the dunny! The German
guy, Robert, opposite me starting yelling at her "XXXX that is not ze toilet! XXXX you is pissing on ze verdammt floor!" The little lady ignored all of this, finished her task and hopped back into bed. It was only when we turned on the light
to examine the damage that she awoke and asked what was going on. It took a lot of time to convince her of her guilt
for squirting the carpet and some of Agnes sheets and mattress. The next day she dreaded meeting us even after having changed
the sheets and scrubbing the carpet clean, but tragedy had turned to comedy with just a pinch of time and we knew it wasn't on purpose. So the valuable lessons learned were 1. Cheaper is not always better (or drier) 2. Always book a top bunk and they'll have to aim high to get you. We ended our time in Perth on a happy note, with an invitation to a big steak dinner from my friend Tim's sister, Helen and her husband Dave. Tim had mentioned in a mail that they lived near Perth and provided me with a number to call. I wasn't on the phone even a minute when I was told to hop on a train towards Fremantle and under no circumstances to bring anything, especially not wine. We brought two bottles only, so as to be responsible because it was a weeknight, they were both doctors and they had a little chap, Peter to look after. It wasn't until I walked through the door, after Dave collected us from the station and met Helen that I knew for sure that I had never set eyes on her in my life. Tim has so many sisters and
I guess I've met over half of them over the years, but there could be more. Anyway, fair play to Helen and Dave for inviting two complete strangers to their home and feeding us and entertaining us for the night. Thanks guys (and for the money for the train too, Mammy Twomey). We made it back in time to head to the Mustang bar and meet our two German dorm mates, but we didn't go too wild as we had a campervan to collect the next morning to start the journey north.
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