In case anyone was wondering we arrived in Perth absolutely fine! Our evening spent at Singapore airport passed pretty quickly and we finally arrived in Perth at about 5 in the afternoon, and had an unpleasant shock with regards to Oz prices! Being back in the Western world was also a shock - everything was so easy and hassle free. Our only problem was that Perth hostels were pretty much booked out so we spent our first couple of days in Perth changing hostels - it did mean we got to know the city and suburbs quite well though!

We looked into doing some trips over a few days down the coast to Margaret River wine region or up to Ningaloo reef to dive with whale sharks but costs and bad time of year made us decide to save our money for other trips.

Our time was mostly spent relaxing and getting to know the city of Perth (we think we know our way around pretty welll!) and meeting up with friends - oh and eating a lot of meat pies and drinking smoothies (arrr Western delights - our first night we treated ourselves to a big steak!). We spent about a week and a half in the city and went out a few days to Freemantle, a beautiful town in the Suburbs of Perth with Colonial buildings and a nice brewery bar! We also did our own mini wine tour of Swan Valley (the opposite side of Perth to Freemantle). We hopped on a train to the end of the line and took a walk to a winery - although we didn't realise walking in the heat would be quite so bad. When we reached the winery the lady behind the bar stocked us full of ice cold water before leaving us to drink whatever wine we wanted (white port with ice and lemon is v refreshing!) and then gave us a lift back to the station! The Aussies are pretty friendly, awesome people. We also visited a few of the gorgeous white sand, clear blue sea beaches and watched an incredible sunset at Cottesloe beach (where Heath Ledger's funeral/memorial was).

Some of our photos show our first introduction to real Aussie drinking. Jodie (who we met in Asia) put us in touch with her brother who lives in Perth (well did until last week) so we met up with him and his mates for a night where they showed us true Aussie drinking. Jagerbombers still baffle me - I'd rather just have Jagermeister. We also met up with Jenny from Uni and her housemates which was cool - nice to see a familiar face, catch up with the goss and meet her new mates.

Via word of mouth we stumbled across Couch Surfing and decided to give it a go. For those who don't know CouchSurfing is a volunteer website set up by a sort of community organisation group and is designed for travellers to meet travellers in their home town by putting the former up on their couches or giving them advice on what to do when in the area. We had our first experience with a guy called Dhugal who lives in the suburbs of Perth. We stayed at his home for about 3 nights, even though out of the city it was a fantastic experience. He gave us lots of useful info about the whole of Oz and we had a good laugh - he really enjoys QI so we watched quite a bit.

We booked a flight up to Darwin for early morning of the 2nd, so left Dhugals on the 1st and spent the night of the 2nd at the airport (after seeing Jenny and Chris in the day and evening to say goodbyes)! Arrrr how we love our sleepless nights at airports! They're free though.

Perth is an aweseome city especially to chill and catch your breath in, which is almost all we did! (but we didn't see any dolphins - boo).