Perth

We slept well after arriving at our hotel around midnight. The arrival into Perth had to be the easiest we have ever experienced, from getting off the aircraft to being out of the airport took only twenty minutes. I suppose conditioned by watching Australian Border Force on the TV at the gym I was expecting a protracted process, just the opposite, just polite efficient officials.

We would have slept better but from a telephone call from Laura who is in Auckland at 7am. Her lame excuse that she had forgotten there is a five hour time difference between there and Perth. Mind you I went straight back to sleep. After a leisurely breakfast we set out to explore in glorious weather, hot and sunny with a pleasant breeze. We started at the central boat quay and were fortunate to catch a cruise just before it left for Fremantle, about seventy-five minutes away down the Swan River. 

This beautiful stretch of water varies from a few hundred metres width to a bay 4.5 kilometres wide but is only navigable to shallow drafted boats.

The cruise was enhanced by a lively, humorous commentary that centred considerably on the house prices and the rich inhabitants of the riverside properties. There was more to the cruise than that though, dolphins jumped out of the river near the boat, there were sandbars stretching almost right across the river, and the world’s largest urban park. It was a really lovely relaxed trip for us on the first day of our adventure and enabled us to get a feel for Perth. It is a largely modern city with a typical high-rise downtown area bordering oh the river. It does not appear to have many tourists and little tourist specific infrastructure. As it has for us I think for tourists it is mainly a gateway city for Western Australia, which it dominated having about two million of the 2.6 million inhabitants.

After our return to the city we fortuitously found a micro-pub for a late snack lunch. I had an excellent IPA, which augured well for beers to come. It was lovely just to sit in the afternoon sunshine. Unusually for me I then had to do some shopping, we needed a cheap sat-nav for the rest of the holiday, so I explored the central shopping district. By chance I found a discount computer shop fairly quickly that had a glass case full of sat-navs. When I asked about the content the assistant helpfully said that it had New Zealand roads as well!!! I guess it will end up on Ebay.

So after reorganising the cases for our road trip we went out to dinner at bar/restaurant, Partition Kitchen. There we had a superb meal, it was sharing plates, but unlike is sometimes the case there was no shortage of food. After bread and olives we started with beef tartare mixed with piquant flavourings. The principal courses were wagyu beef with wasabi and tomatoes olive oil and tofu. The puds were perhaps the highlight, Marion had gingerbread ice cream with rhubarb and sour cherries, some of the rhubarb appeared to be freeze dried, contributing to a huge medley of tastes. I had an orange sponge soaked with espresso, which was fabulous.

All in all a great first day in Australia. Tomorrow is a long drive so we will be up early, perhaps Laura will give us a wake-up call to help!