An update from Perth

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Well it’s been a while since I’ve written in here, so what’s been going on I here you ask?

We moved in to a nice apartment in South Perth, it’s across the water from the city but it only takes seven minutes on the ferry or 10 minutes by bus from outside our door.

South Perth is a nice spot, a leafy suburb with loads of mega expensive apartments and condo type affairs, there’s loads of restaurants, three pubs and loads of wee café’s and trendy coffee shops. I’ve worked in most of these places but that’s another thread entirely……

We’re moving towards winter here and it’s getting pretty wet, it doesn’t rain often, twice a week or so, but when it does rain it comes down in style I tell thee. It’s never really cold, the hottest we get now is about 30 degrees but it averages out around 24 during the day and around 12 degrees overnight and early morning.

We do feel the cold though as we had gotten used to the 40+ and high 30’s of March and April, the nights are real dark here, I’m missing the lighty nights back home, it gets pitch black here about 6pm, it’s as if someone switches off a light between 6pm and 7am, total blackness.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been in Australia for over 2 months; we’ve been in Perth for 9 weeks!! The time has really flown in here and I think this is because we’re not really doing much here; we’ve not been traveling about or seeing many sights, just working and socialising.

America and New Zealand were non-stop busy times, day after day we would do something different and although we were shattered by the time we got to Fiji we missed the traveling part as we relaxed on the beach, it’s getting kinda like that here, and we’re itching to move on.

However we have a purpose here, we have to work to enjoy our travels in the lifestyle we’ve become accustomed too, and to be honest it’s not a bad place or climate to work for a living.

We’re planning to stay in Perth for another 7 weeks until the first week in July and will then spend the rest of the month traveling up and down the West Coast before spending August getting back to Sydney for our flight to Korea on the 31st, and then the adventure really begins….

We’re enjoying Perth but in all honesty it’s not that much different for home, it’s a lot slower paced, than Edinburgh in particular, but ultimately we do the same as at home here, go to work, go to the pub, go to bed, I’m missing my cycling and playing football though and I’m piling on the pounds to prove it. We’re trying to do more with our weekends here but it’s real difficult without a car, everything is so far away, it’s a huge part of the country.

Western Australia is a third of Australia’s land mass yet only has two million of the countries 17 million inhabitants so you can imagine the sheer size and open spaces, you could fit FOUR United Kingdom’s into the size of Western Australia so there is space for 200 million people yet there is only 1% of that total, brutal.

There is loads to see up the coast yet so few people get to this side of the county, some of the nations most spectacular sights, the Pinnacles Desert, Monkey Mia, Ningaloo Reef, Cable Beach, Broome and the Bungle-Bungle National Park in the Kimberley are just some of the must see sights that we’re planning to visit in July.

Into August we’ll take a trip through the Nullabor Plain to the Flinders Ranges on route to Adelaide followed by a jaunt along the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne, over to Canberra and back to Sydney and all that’s in between, it’ll be some road trip and I can’t wait to get back behind the wheel. Fiona wants to take a trip up the East Coast to Brisbane but I’m not convinced that we’ll have the time for it, fingers crossed though, it would be nice to see Queensland.

Perth is a nice city, very green in places, the centre of Perth has the larges metropolitan park in the world, yes even bigger than Central Park in New York, Kings Park is it’s name and it houses the war memorial, the botanic gardens and loads of nice walks and features, it’s only a 20 minute walk from our flat so it’s a nice place to chill out.

I’ve got more to tell you about my jobs and that and loads of photo’s to add but I’ll have to do it next time, I’m meeting Fiona at the station five minutes ago.

See ya

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Photos

View of the City from our end
This is at the end of our street, 30 seconds from our flat, a wee bit beach and a braw view.

The Swan Bell Tower
They got the bells from St Martin's in the field, it plays the Oranges and Lemons song about 300 times a day.

Our flat
It's small but real nice, location, location, location.

Reflections of the city
I'm a real arty person you see.

Jack and Bill
When I was 'between jobs' these guys were my best friends, we'd go for walks, eat and generally be there for each other in our times of need.