Life without Brucey goes on...!

Our first full day in Perth was Good Friday. We decided to walk into the city centre from our base in Northbridge, just outside. It was extremely quiet on the roads - when we got into the centre we realised why - Aussies treat Good Friday like Christmas Day - everything shuts down for the day!! There were no pubs or supermarkets open and even the visitors information office was shut! So we headed to the south of the city to the waterfront by Swan River, where we finally found some people! We spent the afternoon relaxing in the sun. That evening we headed up to the MEB Stadium for our first experience of Super14 Rugby! The game was the Western Force (Perth's team) against Cape Town's Stormers and there were a number of renowned international players playing (the Wallabies' James O'Connor was a key player for the Force and the Stormers had the Springbok Captain Shalk Burger and Bryan Habana). We went with a few other people from our hostel so the atmosphere was good and the game was cracking, with a Jonny Wilkinson style drop-kick goal in the dying minutes of extra time to win the game for the Force!

We checked out of our hostel on Saturday morning and headed to Fremantle on the train (30 minutes south of Perth) - our base for the next few days. Over the Easter Weekend, they have a Street Arts Festival, where various performers put on shows around the streets of Fremantle. The shows are free and very entertaining, although as street buskers they always ask for money at the end (a la Covent Garden). On Saturday afternoon we met Alex's cousin Matt, and his family. By chance, they were in the area at the same time as us visiting friends of theirs that live over here. It was a great chance to catch up with them! We watched a few of the performers, then headed for drinks. Matt's son, Jed, tried his hand at busking with his Diablo... he earnt $10... his first ever earnings. We were all very proud! Our drinks continued into the evening with Matt, Kay and their friend Sue. Sue's husband, James, had kindly offered to babysit all the kids (he was happy as the footy was on!) We went to Little Creatures, one of Fremantle's microbrewery's, a place that had been recommended to us by the security guy when we got off the plane in Sydney at the start of our trip! The beer was great and the food was amazing! Thanks to Matt and Kay for buying dinner and the majority of the drinks that night - it was extremely kind of you.

On Easter Sunday, Sue and James invited us over to theirs for a BBQ - the Aussie's way of celebrating Easter! We even braved the pool (it was a pretty chilly day!) for a game of volleyball with Matt and Kay! Later, the adults managed to sneak in a go at Singstar before the kids caught us and took over! We had a great day - thanks guys.

On Easter Monday, we spent the day catching other street acts that we'd not yet seen around Fremantle. The highlight was an Argentinian guy called Victor - he was hilarious and his act involved football tricks - the finale being juggling 5 footballs at once (he holds the world record for this!)

On Tuesday, we checked out of our hostel in Fremantle and caught the ferry over to the beautiful Rottnest Island. This was discovered by a Dutch guy and he mistook the Quokkas that live there for big rats (if they were rats, they'd have to be huge!) and the name Rottnest is Dutch for "rat's nest". As it is, the Quokkas are these really cute marsupials! The island is amazing - it's only about 20kms in perimeter, and there are no vehicles (apart from the bus that does a loop and the odd maintenance van) so everyone gets around on bikes! As soon as we arrived after about 30 minutes on the ferry, we went to the bike hire shop and bagged ourselves a couple of single gear beauties for our two days there! I haven't ridden a bike for years and was a little worried about how I'd find it, but I loved it (apart from the number of hills - my thighs were killing by the end of the first day!) The weather was a little overcast when we arrived, so it was a great chance to explore the island and all the little bays. By the afternoon it had cleared and so we had a well-deserved rest on Parakeet Bay, then treated ourselves to a take-away on the way back to our hostel!

The weather on Wednesday was great, so after riding to the end of the island "West End', we returned to Little Salmon Bay, a gorgeous little cove that we'd seen the morning before and spent the rest of our day there before catching our ferry back to Fremantle. Whilst on Rottnest, the hostel that we'd been staying in had kindly agreed to store our boards (with For Sale signs on them) for us so we didn't have to carry them. We returned to the hostel when we arrived back in Fremantle to collect the boards, as our plan was then to head back to Perth and to the hostel that we'd been staying in before Easter. We'd just left the hostel and were heading down the road when the receptionist ran out after us and said that someone was interested in the surfboard... result! The guy gave us $200 - almost what we paid in the first place so we were chuffed to bits and headed back to Perth with a (slightly) lighter load!