Perth, so far...

A relatively short post...

The camper van was great fun but really tiring. On Friday evening, when we got back to Pam's we were both shattered and spent the evening doing very little, while enjoying having a sofa to sit on.

We were up quite early on Saturday and got the van cleaned and returned to the depot, it was sorted very quickly and then we were off to Kings Park. This is a lovely park and botanic gardens on a small hill overlooking Swan River and the city centre. Nothing was in bloom because summer here is too hot and dry; conversely winter is cooler and wetter and the prime growing /flowering time. There were lots of types of gum trees and they had a few quite impressive baob trees (an Aussie version of baobab trees). There is also a very elegant bridge, which slightly unnervingly swayed, giving views into the tree tops. Further around there was an elegant and cool and shady war memorial. There were lots of names from WW1 & 2 and a few more recent. While up north, past Exmouth, we came across a WW2 look out; I found it quite surprising to realise the extent to the conflict. It really was global.

On Sunday we enjoyed a very lazy morning then went to the beach. It was very windy and rough and we enjoyed watching wind surfers. The water was 'only' 23 deg, which felt a bit cold after the lovely warm seas up north, haha!

Today we took the train from Whitfords into the city centre. We looked around the shops which were different enough from the UK to be interesting, this included tasting yummy chocolate and passion fruit curd, and then we had smiley pies (see photo) from Face Pie. In the afternoon we went into the art gallery and museum. The art gallery had a nice mix of Australia and world artists and was partly housed in the old court house, which was elegant. The museum was reasonably interesting although the exhibits were a slightly strange mix of things and then we headed back to Pam's.