Perth Take One: Saturday 5th February - Tuesday 8th February

We arrived in Perth late in the evening and stepped off the plane to feel a weird sensation - something we hadn't felt since we left Hong Kong: cold! Apparently there was an unusual wind coming in from the desert which gave the chill. Ok, it wasn't English cold but when you've flown in from 40 degrees and being in the tropics it makes you feel cold and need to put some sleeves on!

We caught the cheap bus and wandered through the city centre full of people drunkenly enjoying their Saturday night and eventually found our hostel 'Coolibah Lodge'. It was just on the edge of the city centre, which meant an extra ten minute walk to some places but it also meant that we wouldn't have all the drunken people wandering past. It was an ok place, decent communal area, rooms were a bit small but cool enough (there seems to be a lack of air conditioning on the West Coast which is crazy when temperatures are regularly above 40 degree) and the people who were mainly Irish were very friendly. We were quite tired so went straight to bed and half way through the night someone came in and turned the huge bright lights on (you just don't do that in a hostel when people are asleep) so in my half asleep state I shouted out "what you doing"?! Oops, but needless to say the lights went off quickly and we were chatting as if it never happened the next day!

Perth itself is a growing city bit lots of suburbs but the city centre itself is still very small and mostly walkable. Northbridge is the main backpacker area full of hostels, bars, clubs, boutique stored, oriental restaurants, free museums with great exhibits etc and the CBD which is south (or maybe west) of this towards the river has all the shops which all look really nice but are too expensive for us. You can walk from one side of the CBD to the other in around ten minutes. Further towards the river you will find about five skyscrapers, Anglican churches, the courts and the jettys. It's a really nice place, all very clean and new with a large colonial influence. They've even built a place called London Court which is a little shopping arcade based on tudor architecture. As of most Australian cities Perth still has it's problems with the Aboriginees consuming a lot of alcohol on the streets but generally it feels a really safe and nice place to walk around. You also hear a lot of English accents from the locals and it's easy to see why they have emigrated here.

We spent our first day trying to sort out a campervan for our road trip but gave up once we realised that in the West most offices are closed on a Sunday. So instead we spent some time trying to get to know the city. We walked into town to get feel for the place, through the shopping area, past the Supreme Court and Bell Tower to the River. Although it's a small city it's nice to feel orientated before doing too much.

We spent the afternoon at the Museum of Western Australia. It was a really good museum and just the right size for us to spend a couple of hours. They had exhibits on all of the WA animals, crazy frogs, lizards, spiders etc, a display on the wild animals, shark jaws (definitely get out of the water quick if you see a Great White)! But best of all they had a great exhibition on the history of the Aborigine population, it really is an amazing history but also sad and hard to believe what we did to them. It's not difficult to see why many of them live the lives they do today - drinking on the streets all days.

The great thing about Perth too is that there is a free bus around the city centre yet on this day for some reason we decided to walk for miles instead. Later that afternoon we went to the NIB stadium to see Perth Glory FC play their last match of the season against Gold Coast United. One of the main attractions to this was Robbie Fowler! For the standard of play tickets were quite expensive but Sean had wanted to watch some live sport for some time so we went anyway. There were 6,000 people in a 15,000 capacity stadium and one player (Jamie Harman) was playing his last match after 13 years and 250 matches for the club. Gold Coast went on to win 2-1 and Robbie Fowler was pretty lazy as always. I tried to get his autograph for you Jamie but he didn't quite come close enough!

After the match we walked all the way back down to the river again to a restaurant called 'Annalakshmi'. It's an Indian restaurant on one of the piers, overlooking the river when you can sit out on the verandah and watch the sunset whilst enjoying your curry. the best thing about this place is that it is all all you can eat buffet where you pay a donation of your choice at the end (min $5). Unfortunately it is vegetarian but it didn't stopped it being damn good, and of course Sean took all you can eat to another level. The restaurant is run entirely by volunteers and is a non-for-profit organisation. I bet there aren't many places in the world that you can eat a tonne of curry whilst watching the sunset in shorts & t-shirt all for $5!

The following day I spent the morning trying to organise a campervan but it wasn't successful. The West Coast has become really busy as people left the East due to the floods and cyclone and as a result all the cheap campers were booked up. After a stressful few hours on the phone and internet we finally secured a little Hyundai Getz and so went down to the Perth Mint. We decided that watching gold being poured wasn't worth $15 each so we just looked at the free exhibits instead. I had my eye on $60,000 piece of jewellery but Sean was a little bit short on cash. I spent the evening trying to put together a little itinerary for our trip, but that was wasted when two days into our trip we changed it all! Oh well!