Hello,

Well i thought i had better come and give a bit of an update from Perth. The day after i last wrote, i went on a free walking tour in the town, organised by the tourist information office. it was good to get a highlight and some history of the city. On the walking tour i met a really nice girl from isreal, who was staying in the same hostel as me. Perth is a nice city, it is small, but nice. it has free buses throughout the city which is good and seems to have lots of free facilities for children and elderly people. There is an english quarter, which has a row of 'english style' shops, all in a very bad form of mock tudor. in there there is a shop that sells english foods, so of course i went in and bought myself some marmite! I have met some other really nice people in my hostel, Laura who is from Bristol, Wesley and Pj who i am sharing a room with who are both from Ireland. In the afternoon Wesley and i went to Kings Park, which is this amazing park that looks right over the city, it is so beautiful, the best city park i have seen so far. There is a cool bridge (which you will see in the pictures) and a war memoral that you can sit one person on each side, and if you put your face towards the stone and talk you can hear each other really clearly, its so weird. the stone must carry the sound or something.

On Saturday night i went out with the Irish guys to a pub called Rosie's , which was good fun. On Sunday i went to a town just dwon the coast on the train called Fremantle. It is a really nice little town, and was originally a convict colony. i went to a good market and watched lots of street performers which were really good. I then went to the old convict prison and had a guided tour (where i bumped into some other peopl from my hostel) and it was quite scary to see how the convicts, and then later the prisoners were kept, as it was a working prison until the 1990's. they also did hangings there which wasnt very nice. Then in the evening there was a movie night and we watched Benjamin Button (very good but long). Today I went to a travel agent and got my 5 day top end tour booked for darwin, which was a relief. i am just trying to change my flights now so that i can get an earlier flight back to sydney, then an earlier flight onto NZ. It is all quite frustrating, as i dont know how long to spend in Darwin, and the days i want to come back are more expensive than leaving too early or too late so i will have to either leave on thursday or sunday, thursdayt being not enough time in darwin and sunday being too much time. So i dont know what to do. I have also just realised just now that i am in Perth a day longer than i thought, which is annoying as i feel reeady to leave now, there isnt much left for me to explore! After the travel agent i went to Kings Park again, and just sat and read my book and then sewed up my bag which was falling apart. Looks like i am going to have another two days of sitting and reading before my flight! doh.

I am going to meet with Sally, the Vietnamese girl i met in Vietnam who now lives in Perth! So that will be good. Speak soon