Hello again,

So we had fun lugging around all of our luggage (how did we pack so much for 2 nights??) to the post office and supermarket, not to mention the bus and train. As usual we found interesting characters when using public transport. While we waited for the train, a guy jumped infront of us as if over boxes or something? Very odd. He then waved at a group of people who seemed to have nothing to do with him...

Once in Freo we made our way to the backpackers hostel and were optimistic when we first arrived, though it was dark inside. They gave us our sheets and keys, and we had a moment of panic after taking the case and bags up to the top floor when we realised our keys were for different rooms. Luckily it had been a mistake and we were together in our 8 dorm room. When we got in the room we were greeted by mess and smelliness (kinda of expected) but no other roommates. We tried to figure out who we were sharing with by looking at their stuff and concluded it must be 5 guys. It then turned out there was a guy in the room after all, asleep on one of the beds (at 2 in the afternoon?) so we had to be very quiet. We each had to have a top bunk, that comes with arriving last we guess. After a little walk and explore around the town with our huge rucksacks and a kind of 'what have we done?' attitude, we grabbed a yummy ice cream and went window (of course) shopping. Mary-Ann bought a boomerang and we each got our postcards. Another interesting encounter with a strange person happened when we were walking down the high street, a man (we think aboriginal?) shouted/yelled something out, making Mary-Ann jump out of her skin.

We ended up in a park reading our books. When a bit chilly and bored we headed back to get ready for dinner with Amy's cousin Ellen and her friends. Whilst in our room, one of the guys came in and we managed to squeeze a little conversation out of him - he had been travelling in Oz for 14 months and staying at the Sundancer backpackers for 6 weeks, he gave it his thumbs up seal of approval. Later on we met at 'Little Creatures', a really nice brewery/restaurant by the harbour with Ellen, James, Chuey and his sister. Except for the odd waiter (hanging upside down from the bar?), all was quite normal. The food was very yummy and we are determined to get back there again to try some more. After dinner we found a Baskin Robins by the harbour and were very excited to see so many flavours!! It was difficult to restrain and only get one scoop of one flavour. Then, even though we were just a 5 minute (if that) walk away from the restaurant, Chuey insisted on driving us back and we all squeezed in the car. Unfortunately due to one way roads it took about 10 minutes to actually find the place, but was nice to have 10 minutes more company with nothing else to do that night.

Once back, we headed for our room and 2 of the guys were already asleep at 10pm!! Far too early for us crazy cats...so we hung out downstairs, feeling slightly out of place. Eventually (maybe half 11?) 2 French guys, who we had spoken to very briefly after our arrival when they showed us where the toiets were, came to join us. They were probably mid-late 20s but not talking to us because they were 'on the pull', this was obvious so it felt very relaxed and friendly, despite the language barrier. We had a nice long chat, except William insisted on the fact that Mary-Ann was a 45 year old, tired, vegetarian lesbian (with Amy.) Amy got off slightly lighter, probably because she could speak more French, which they seemed to love and kept apologising for their own English, which was very good!As the night went on they got progressively drunk and ended up inviting us to go to the aquarium with them the next day, we declined... Similarly we declined their invite to go to their spare bunk bed in their room if we were scared of our roommates. It was really nice to have some company and meet new people, we had a good giggle and went to bed feeling slightly more like backpackers.

It was so tricky going to bed though, becasue we had to be super quiet, on the top bunk if you moved the whole thing moved, and we had to cuddle our bags of valuables. In the morning we had an apple for breakfast as we didn't fancy the look of their cutlery, aslo the kitchen had people hanging around in it and we felt very out of place. We went on a guided (by leaflet) walk called the 'Discovery Trail' which took us pretty much around the whole town. Our favourite part was an art gallery exhibition we stumbled upon called the 'SIEV X' about a group of asylum seekers from Indonesia who were transported to Australia in 2001 and because of the state of the vessel and the organiser's lack of sticking to health and safety/humanitarian regulations, the majority of the group drowned (about 350?) We were shocked that the incident was so recent and that we hadn't heard anything of it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIEV_X) Our walk only lasted us until lunch so we grabbed some bruschetta in a cafe and headed out for another walk. This one proved less successful as we couldn't find any of the marked points, so we gave up and went to the shops and park. By 3 o'clock we had basically exhausted Fremantle and decided (because we hadn't slept very well, had to be so quiet and therefore couldn't do anything in the evenings) we would head home a night early at about 5.

Since the trip we've just been catching up on washing and shopping etc. Tomorrow we're hoping to go and see the cathedral and Performing Arts museum.

Just to mention, if you have any comments for the pics would it be possible to leave them on the main message board as we haven't got time to go through all the photos on the off chance someone has left a comment and we don't get notifications. Because we want to know what you think! Thanks!!!

Lots of love,
Us
xxxx