The songs of distant Perth

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January 24th 2008

Published: February 21st 2008

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Roundyrhino

Where are we now?

Oh, right!

The plane touched down at four am. I hate when we arrive somewhere at a stupid time as it usually means that we're homeless for a while and so I found myself almost begging the customs officer to go through my bag, but of course he smiled and said, 'welcome to Australia.' Damn friendly Aussies.

After five coffees, an unsuccessful slumber in arrivals, a more successful and slightly freaked out slumber in the coffee shop in departures and a final conversation with a marshmallow pillow that seemed to be posing as a table, Alan rang the hostel and they told us that we could sleep on the couch if we wanted.

A Russian taxi-driver wearing shorts of the cargo-pant variety (a sight we were to become used to) drove us through the wide empty highway past warehouse department stores plonked in the middle of nowhere featuring logos comprising of middle-aged men's faces in cartoon form, adding to the general weirdness of the experience and then on into Perth, a really pretty city full of houses that reminded me of that old TV series, 'The Sullivans'. Being a Sullivan myself I felt right at home. At the hostel the Polish

Cape Leeuwin lighthouse

Right on the South Western corner of Oz

woman working on the desk told us all about her twenty three months working and studying in the city, and by the time she finished our room had been vacated so we nose-bombed into bed and awoke with fuzzy mouths three hours later.

'Food' we thought and wandered out into the blistering heat of the city. We wandered in and out of roads and through business districts, historical housing developments, big train stations, wide highways, parks, more warehouses full of gurning men's faces beckoning us to purchase beds and furniture and yet we encountered nobody. It was a little disconcerting, and Alan swears he saw tumble-weed floating by, but I think he just said that for effect. Perth is empty - it's a modern, lively looking city, full of carefully tended public spaces, yet the abundance of space is a shock to the system after a life-time of European cities, cramped and peopled in our experience. In ways it was glorious having the pavement to ourselves, strolling around and feeling as though we owned the city. One morning we ended up reading in a public garden just below a skyscraper and saw three people pass in an hour and

Fresh from the vines

Margaret River

a half. For all my talk of emptiness though, after dinner we stumbled from a street where we had delighted upon open restaurants past a bar with country music blaring out, the doors were open to let the cool evening air in and looked in at couples of all ages, sporting flared skirts and quiffs (the latter being the men), swinging and flinging one around in the style of an old fashioned ho-down.

In Perth we saw some groups of indigenous Australians, but little interaction between them and others from the city which was noticeable given the wide mix of ethnic groups working and living there, and there were some shops selling indigenous art which we oogled at, remembering other examples we had seen in the Quai Branly museum in Paris earlier in our trip. Heath Ledger was found dead the day after we arrived, and as he was a native of Perth, the city was mourning his loss. We thought about him and the roles he had played, most notably in our opinion in Brokeback Mountain and Monster's Ball.

The day we visited the Aquarium of Western Australia we realised where everybody was. It's an amazing place,

Drinky the frog

...knows his vintages

well worth a visit if you're interested in the marine world. They have a really cool aquarium that is huge and incredibly you stand on this moving conveyer belt that winds its way through the huge space, with Manta Rays, Turtles and even Sharks all having a good gawp at you, at points it felt as though we were the ones on exhibition to the fish, and of course you do sometimes wonder what would happen if the thing leaked, 'jackpot' I imagine is how the sharks would view it, shiver.

The King's Park was a great spot for a picnic, we chilled out in the heat and laughed at the crows who kept at us for our apple cores saying 'ooooh' in a most sad voice. Who knew that crows eat apple cores? I think Dublin crows would turn their beaks up at that and request a crust of bread. We wandered around the city, noting the mix of new and old, ate like kings and then groaned like paupers when we compared the price of our meal to those we had enjoyed in Thailand. The Museum of Western Australia was great, full of cool exhibits from early

Rough seas and rocky shores

The beach at Margaret River

settlers, many of whom were Irish, and the indigenious communities, fascinating to see the historical artifacts and get a sense of the city and surrounding area. In the museum we realised how new the city is and how it is just perched on the edge of an old, old land. While we were aware of this before going there, it was different to experience it. I was particularly interested in how the indigenous people managed to survive in such a hostile environment, making great use of plants for health purposes, and using every item at their disposal - for example, animal skins were inverted and used to create water-pouches, one of the exhibits was a kangaroo skin used for this purpose and you could clearly see the shape of the animal.

It was glorious weather and after a few days we decided to head down the coast and rented a car, which turned out to be a golden Hyundai Accent which we named Jessica, for no particular reason. A bit nervous having not driven (except for mopeds in Thailand) we were delighted as the roads were wide and pretty empty and the other drivers much more chilled than those

Perth

The view from Kings Park

of the Thai islands. We stopped in Margaret River, fascinated, as everyone we'd met had told us we 'just have to go to Margaret River.' It's a very pretty town and the beach is fantastic, but the real reason for a visit is that the area is renowned for its wine, so of course we had to sample the local brew and enrolled on the 'Bushtucker Winery Trip.' All I can say is that there is probably no better way to pass a day than being driven around by Perri, an excellent and witty tour-guide, in the company of another ten to fifteen people who like a tipple in the countryside.

We visited four vineyards, one cheese-maker, one chocolate-maker and a brewery - bliss! On the tour were two ladies from Dublin and Wicklow, a couple - she from Lithuania, he from Australia and the girl's father, two couples from Margaret River, Mick and Jacqueline (he from Melbourne, she from North Queensland), Coleen and Andy (she from Western Australia, he from Scotland) and Alan and myself. At the start everyone was shy and nodding politely and during the course of the day it was fascinating to see how people

Ahhh, yes...

Eh, it's ...red ...and er ...winey.

came out of themselves to the point that at the last vineyard half the tour were saying 'delicious, mmm' and the others were saying 'no, don't like that at all!' and tipping the glass away - I felt sorry for the Sommelier, but he is well used to it, I'd say, taking us all in his stride. A load of us decided that we hadn't sampled enough and went to the pub in the town's hotel afterwards for a long session, involving copious pool competitions. It was one of those class times in your life, those nights that you'll remember forever - by the end of the night we knew everyone in the pub and I for one had a fantastic time as Jacqueline was my pool partner, and the girl is a shark, and also the local men seemed to like my accent, one man even inviting me to stay in his house the next night, which Alan found hilarious and suggested that I take him up on it to give him some peace, don't know what Al meant by that, but anyway.

The next day our heads hurt so we kept a low profile and wandered around

A beautiful cove

Aoife takes in one of the many nameless but breathtaking beaches on the road to Cape Leeuwin

town for a bit. Then we decided to head down to Cape Leeuwin, the most south-westerly mainland point of the Australian Continent and we looked at the lighthouse and then wandered around for a bit. We were trying to spot the line between the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean, which should be marked with a net or something I think as I found watching the water a little hypnotic and was about to fall in when these young guys, kindof cool surfer dude types, called our attention to a school of dolphins - amazing.

We also stopped in Jewel Cave, a really impressive cave that you are lead around by a cave-expert and delightfully our group also had a child-expert called Dillon who had seen 'Walking with Cave-Men' and kept stopping the cave-expert to tell him 'do you know I know a lot about cave-men?' and 'I think that cave-men lived here once' to which the cave-expert would blush and say, 'no, I'm afraid no cave-men lived here' and then Dillon would pipe up, 'aw yeah they did. Over there probably' and point to a dark crevice.

Later we drove back up the coast, stopping at beaches

Oh dear

Us with Mick, Jacqueline, and a random Leitrim man in the Corner Bar, Margaret River.

and wondering at the lush green of the growth along the backroads. For a lark, well just because of the fact that Algernon Moncrieff in 'The Importance of Being Earnest' goes Bunburying, we decided to stop in Bunbury for the night. Unfortunately it wasn't a fictional middle-England town from the early twentieth century, but as it was Australia Day it was probably Bunbury at it's most illuminating, so we watched the fireworks and tried to look integrated with flag-wearing, beer-swilling Australian teenagers for the evening. For the first time we spotted the flag of the Indigenious people being proudly displayed alongside the Australian flag.

The next morning I decided to swim and bounced into the beautiful ocean only to be promptly dashed by a vicious wave, not terribly cool. With both my knees bloody and scraped I made my way past tonnes of aquatic surfing two year olds back to shore, feeling like a right eejit. I felt even more stupid when I realised that I was entirely luminous pink due to a lack of sun-screen, despite the fact that I was only in the water five minutes at most.

Back in Perth we realised that we had

World's most adorable roadsign (tm)

Australia is a land of great roadsigns

spent about ten times our budget, and so the next days were chilling out eating Pot Noodles and reading book-swap books.

Then it was on to Adelaide, but sure I have to string this out, so we'll tell you about that another day.

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