Into the west

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Perth is the capital of Western Australia, a state that's almost the size of India but with a population of less than 2 million - three quarters of whom live in Perth. The geographical isolation of the city can perhaps best be appreciated by considering that it's closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney. Though I would have ventured over to this part of the world anyway, it was given added interest by the fact that a friend from university - who I hadn't seen for nearly 10 years - was living in the area. More of that in my Fremantle blog.

My chosen hostel in Perth was the Emperor's Crown, a new place on the east side of Northbridge. The dorm didn't inspire me with a great deal of confidence. Though large, it was a complete tip, which implied long-term residents. The security had been compromised by a trainer that was wedging the door open, not to mention the 4 lockers being unlockable. One of the other guys appeared to be at death's door, as he never left the dorm in the entire time I was there, could often be seen with a cold compress on his forehead, and the only indication he had a pulse was when I came into the dorm once and found him watching manga porn on his laptop. The other 2 occupants turned out to be on different circadian rhythms, given the strange times of the day/night that they were to be found getting up/going to bed.

To add to the fun, the floorboards creaked so it was impossible to move around the room quietly. My bunk was in keeping with the rest of the dorm. Being on top, it was only reachable by a ladder made of the thinnest metal rods imaginable, which were torture to climb up. The bunk itself squeaked like you wouldn't believe, as though the 3 bears had developed it as an intruder alarm after the Goldilocks incident. Just turning over in bed made enough of a row, but climbing into it guaranteed a wake-up call for everyone else in the room.

On the plus side, the showers and toilets were large and airy, and the Internet was cheap.

I stayed in Perth itself for about a week and a half, and used it as a base for visits to Fremantle and Rottnest Island, as well as a loop of the south-west of the state. I found the city to be little different to Adelaide and Melbourne - clean and well-maintained, with a pedestrianised shopping area, but nothing spectacular in terms of sights. One accusation I did hear levelled against it a couple of times was that it lacked culture, compared with Melbourne in particular. Unfortunately I hadn't spent enough time in Melbourne to be able to comment on that statement.

My days were generally spent drifting from one coffee shop to the next, watching the world go by and reading. Evenings involved dining out in various Italian and Japanese restaurants. A favourite drinking venue was the Brass Monkey (sample slogan - "Good on yer, (pri)mate"), which had its own range of (expensive) microbrews. Though this might sound like a slothful existence, in my working life I had as few opportunities to do this as I did to spend a couple of years travelling. Relaxation time is precious, and should not be dismissed (entirely) as lazy time.

The highlight of Perth's sights is King's Park, a set of gardens on a hill overlooking the city. In the tidily-kept grounds can also be found a tree-top walk and an untouched area of "bush". There are a number of walks that you can undertake in order to see all parts of the park, and at night the Perth skyline can be enjoyed from several vantage points. On a more sombre note, there are memorials to the ANZACs and those Australians who died in the 2002 Bali bombings, as well as several avenues of trees that are marked at regular intervals with small signs commemorating individuals lost in the wars. The many remembrance signs planted by mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends and comrades indicate a generation ravaged by conflict - in fact Australian losses in the First World War represented more than 1% of the population.

Though my time in Perth was fairly free of alcohol-fuelled incidents, the one exception to that occurred when I mistakenly assumed I could do some travel planning in a restaurant while drinking a bottle of wine. Afterwards, with little travel planned, I convinced myself to attend a backpacker night at one of the pub/clubs in Northbridge. The place was heaving, the music was to my taste, and the crowd was friendly in a way that often seems to happen with Australians. I also bumped into some other people from the hostel. Several tequila shots and pints of lager later, some McCabe dancefloor action ensued. This process was repeated until chucking out time.

Back at the hostel, with only the near-death guy in residence in the dorm, asleep, I stripped to my undies before deciding a final visit to the gents' might be beneficial. Unfortunately I didn't take my key with me, and the dorm door resolutely failed to respond to my increasingly frantic handle-pumping. With no wish to disturb my one-foot-in-the-grave dorm-mate, and with my befuddled brain incapable of realising that calling the manager was the appropriate course of action, I decided that spending the night on the common room couch would be best, so I progressed to the common room, peering short-sightedly as I went. This is the couch that everyone walks by when either entering or leaving the hostel, i.e. there is no more public place imaginable. Thus it came to pass that a worse-for-wear Englishman could be seen curled up on the couch clad only in his underpants. Fortunately they were my best pair (some striped Jockeys).

The cold light of day made me appreciate, even though slightly hungover, that I was possibly not presenting my best side to the world. I headed to the dorm, hoping to intercept one of the other occupants on their way in/out, and my prayers were almost immediately answered when the guy from the bunk below mine appeared. The pathetically grateful look on my face could not fail to touch his heart. I climbed into bed and didn't rise until midday, solemnly vowing that even if swearing off alcohol was unrealistic, carrying my keys at all times was achievable.

As if to remind me of this, my next visit to that particular bar happened to coincide with samba night, a theme that made me (and any other right-minded cheesy music fan) walk straight out again.

The only other "sight" in Perth that I paid a visit to was the Museum of Western Australia. There was an interesting exhibit about the poor treatment meted out to Aborigines, especially the issue of the Stolen Generations. Up until the 1970s, there was a government policy to remove numbers of part-Aboriginal children from their families and have them brought up in an environment where they would only be exposed to Western culture and ideals. The hope was that this would accelerate the elimination of the Aboriginal race, a process already helped on its way by disease, massacres, etc, to leave the country a predominantly European one. Attempts to address the misery and suffering caused by this policy have included a National Sorry Day (now renamed National Healing Day).

With this being a travel blog, and readers probably uninterested in my blatherings about politics/environmental issues/social issues/etc, I'll merely comment that the Stolen Generations, as well as numerous statistics relating to things such as life expectancy (20 years less for Aborigines than for whites), incidence of diabetes, and infant mortality, paint a far grimmer picture of Aboriginal life in Australia than I had heard of before I came here. Whether due to my own lack of curiosity, or an excellent whitewash campaign by the Australian Tourist Board, my image of the country barely included Aborigines at all - and the ones that were in it were hurling boomerangs around Ayers' Rock when they weren't offering their tracking skills to Crocodile Dundee. Suffice to say, that image was papering over two centuries' worth (and counting) of what mistreatment can only be a poor euphemism for.

The other exhibit at the museum that attracted my attention was a preserved Megamouth, a rare plankton-eating shark of which there have only been 36 sightings, the first of which occurred in 1976 (the one in the museum was number 3). I found a website detailing the fates of the other 35 Megamouths, which amounted to either "died", "released", or "consumed".

I stayed in Perth a second time when I returned from 10 days of driving around the south-west (see later blogs). I stayed at the Emperor's Crown this second time too, though in a dorm with other travellers (as opposed to long-stay workers - to make some sweeping generalisations, the distinction is that the latter tend to be messier, take less care of the hostel, and are cliquier). One of my dorm-mates was Kenjiro, aka Ken, a Japanese guy who had the rare distinction of speaking English even worse than I speak Japanese (probably - he may just have been indulging me). Interestingly, he was carrying an item not often seen on a list of backpacker essentials - a 200-pack of Q-tips.

With the World Cup underway, the Mustang sports bar became the focus of my evenings. The time difference to Germany ensured that I could spend most of the night watching football, which I proceeded to do. It was interesting comparing the atmosphere in the bar depending on which teams were playing. My favourites by far were the games involving either South Korea or Japan - both sets of supporters would turn up in droves, with a remarkably even split of men and women, generally clad in the team colours and sporting face paint or headscarves and other accoutrements. During the games they would regularly break out into chants, but always with a smile. All this contrasted with the crowds for the English games, with drunken males in the majority, and obscenity-strewn tirades screamed at the screen with conviction. Clean-eared Ken and I watched a few of the games together, having broken conversations in Japlish and bemoaning Japan's indifferent performances.

One of the major issues I had to resolve in Perth was how I was going to progress up the west coast when the time came. There were several options - lifts with other travellers (not keen, due to no knowledge of how frequently these might arise), hiring a car (not keen, due to the enormous amount of driving I'd need to do, not to mention the prohibitively large ($750) one-way fees for going Perth->Darwin on top of the normal rental costs), Easyrider hop-on/hop-off bus (not keen, due to anecdotal evidence that this was for a "younger" crowd, plus it didn't go all the way to Darwin), or Greyhound hop-on/hop-off bus (not keen, due to anecdotal evidence that this would involve interaction with the good, the bad, and the smelly of Australian society). After some research, I figured that one or other of the hop-on/hop-off options would be best. The good points of Easyrider are that the ticket also includes many other activities, e.g. entrance to National Parks, abseiling, kayaking, etc (Greyhound doesn't include anything), plus the bus drops you off at hostels (Greyhound generally drops off at visitor centres, though you can often get the hostel to pick you up from there), plus you can book your hostels through the bus (not available on Greyhound), plus the bus doesn't run through the night (Greyhound does, meaning there are some popular places such as Coral Bay where you arrive in the wee small hours plus you have to leave there in the wee small hours). For me, however, I didn't want to run the risk of travelling with a bunch of teenagers (for their sake, not mine) so Greyhound ended up getting my vote.

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Photos

Perth skyline
As seen from King's Park

Perth skyline by night
As seen from King's Park

Twenty-eight parrot
Named after its call