G'day from Perth!

We have safely checked into our first hostel in Perth out of 3 - the Witch's Hat (http://www.witchs-hat.com/index.asp), we're here for 2 weeks so we were glad to see that the place is amazing!! It's almost like living in a massive family house, they have a common room, crazy kitchen, dvd nights, friday night bbqs, a breakfast courtyard - and luckily the shared bathroom isn't faring too badly so far.

We have discovered that leaving China has made us incredibly depressed! We've actually spent the first two days moping around bursting into floods of tears (not really) at the sight of 'Made in china' on ANYTHING; seeing Chinese restaurants with the characters on the sign (English first, not good) and just generally missing the whole feel and aroma of the place! Yes, the actual aroma - we horribly, inadvertently stepped into a Chinese supermarket across the road from our hostel on the lookout for some baked beans (unsuccessful) only to be hit with the smell of dried squid, mushrooms and jelly. Nasty sounding to some, divine to us. But we have made a conscious decision to HAVE FUN so now we're back on the road full of plans and escapades to keep us occupied.

The most exciting revelation of recent times is that we may well be going skydiving!?! Claire reasons that this is the only thing available in Perth, nevermind the most expensive, that is giving us the same rush of excitement as anything in China did. There are a lot of things to do in Perth, but no Great Walls, so we're thinking BIGGER.

Yesterday we went to the Perth Mint - a gold refining factory where you could look around the old building, learn about the conditions in which they used to refine the valuable material (57 celcius in some of the rooms, no thankyou) and that gold melts at 1064 celcius, yes! We had a little guided tour from someone who looked remarkably like Daniel Sheard and watched a demonstration of gold pouring, which was incredible!

For lunch we weren't happy - we found a place to eat called Tiffin Cafe, which didn't sell tiffin! On the contrary the owners didn't even know what tiffin was, which sent us on a bit of a rant and gave us the idea that we would return, responsible travellers that we are, with a recipe for the miracle food and demand they sell it and make millions in an obviously deprived society. Neither do Australians stock creme freche, which makes it very difficult to make a pesto!

In the centre of the city there is a road which has been built to mimic a 'typical London road,' ie, full of tudorian houses, big ben, cathedrals and really inaccurate representations of 'English public houses'. We weren't impressed - but did find that to send 5kg of souvenirs home in a big box would cost us 30 quid each - no thankyou!

Today we've been trying to book tickets for an Aussie Rules match, with no success as yet, but watch this space!