Perth

Go West
Life is peaceful there
Go West
There in the open air
Go West
Where the skies are blue
Go West
This is what we're gonna do

Life is certainly peaceful in Perth. Sedated, even. After a while, dull. That is, according to the many travelers I've met. I myself haven't had the chance to get bored, and I've actually found it to be quite lively. Looks like I've hit the Interesting Times here: Christmas time. I can easily tell, for the city is packed full. It took me a long long time to find accommodation, and it was of the expensive sort. They say I've hit the "good" hostel though, and I've heard some really interesting stories of what the bad ones are like.

The very day I arrived they had a big parade through the city, with loads of colourful coaches and people dressed up funny, doing crazy choreographies. Dancers, clowns, jugglers, drum-banging hordes of asians, the full set. And the pipers, of course. Heaps of them. Can't have a parade without the pipers, stands to reason.

Then I met the locals and went out for a few beers too many. It was great fun.

Fremantle (the port of Perth) is fun on weekends. I love browsing through stalls in the markets, gaping at every cheap souvenir with a sprayed kangaroo on it. No comparison to the Victoria Market in Melbourne or Paddy's Markets in Sydney, but they're still cool enough. Fremantle also has a bit of history to it, and that's a plus.

Met the first two Spanish guys since Sydney (a rarity themselves in these parts), jolly good chaps both of them, with lots of stories to tell. It felt surprisingly good to have someone to speak Spanish to. I was tired of meeting german and dutch people, with their secret codes of communication. It was fun to use my own for a while.

Then Justo and I went to Scarborough for some beaching, but the day was pretty windy, so we came back up to our ears in sand.

On my last day I finally climbed to King's Park for some nice views of the city. They say it's prettier at sundown, but I had to get going.

All in all, though I've enjoyed my time there, met a truckload of cool people and had heaps of fun, I haven't done much in Perth itself. I suppose there just isn't much to do. It's just a nice place, with a "relaxed and laid-back" atmosphere. A place where it's common to get a nod, a smile and an "Oaryagoin' mate!" from people you pass on the street. Really homely for a city its size.

And then I suppose there's always the museums and zoos to visit. I would've done that, with a few more days to spare. But alas, time is scarce. Gotta get hopping on to Adelaide.

The Pinnacles Trip

I took an organized day trip there, which in the end turned out to include a mere 30 minutes stay at the Pinnacles themselves. I would be angry about that, but I had so much fun it didn't matter.

First of all, I saw my first proper big kangaroos and koalas up close, in a park where we stopped just for that. I also caught a glimpse of a few emus, all of them running away as soon as we approached.



Then, on our way to do some sandboarding, our driver managed to get our 4WD truck stuck in sand. Bogged, he called it. After watching how the halfwit tried forward and reverse 80 times and just dug deeper and deeper, I offered my services as a rational being and came up with the idea of putting rocks and wood under the wheels. He discarded it as useless, and tried to dig out the wheels with his hands. I came up with the idea of using the sandboards as shovels. He discarded it as useless, and just continued to sink the thing deeper.

So I just did what I had proposed, and gathered rocks and sticks, then started shovelling with a board. Two Asian guys joined in. We propped the wheels, and we shoveled, and we shoveled some more, while our idiot driver watched and commented. I started pushing and everybody joined. We pushed. And we pushed and we sweated. And we pushed and we sweated some more.

And we made it.

We got the truck out of the sand. It was great. For the same price, a full hour of forced labor for free!

After that, the sandboarding, on big dunes of very fine sand. An opportunity to end up to my ears in sand I didn't miss. It's fun, but not as exciting as it seems.

Then we drove a few more hours and arrived at the National Park. Had a nourishing barbie* lunch there, then went to see it. We saw it. I loved it. Even though it was too short.

Drove half of the 260km back to Perth. I slept. We had tea*. Drove back the other half. I slept.

I arrived back at the hostel, and heartily filled my dorm with a very abundant mix of three different kinds of sand, much to the cleaning lady's dismay the following morning.

Heaps of sand. Heaps of fun.





* barbie=barbecue. As in, brekkie=breakfast, undies=underwear
*tea=light early evening meal, very rarely including tea

Pinnacles

Picture this: Hundreds of thousands of solid rock pillars, boldly reaching for the blue sky again, through the sand and the wind, like the once mighty trees that made them... while slowly crumbling away, constantly, inevitably, eroding, bit by bit disintegrating into more sand, joining the infinite surrounding dunes... then blown away and away, over the hills and beyond the horizon, fine dust subtly flying into oblivion.

That's the Pinnacles. Beautiful, isn't it?

Out of Rottnest

I booked the trip to Rottnest Island and the accommodation with a travel agency, which was a first for me. I paid a few dollars more, but I saved myself a lot of trouble.

Just as usual, when we're talking bureaucracy and myself, by the time I got to Fremantle C-shed, the ferry company had no record of my booking. I actually had a booking for an 8:30 service that didn't exist (their fault: a misprint). Took them half an hour to fix it.

I enjoyed the cruise, and got there without further incident. I knew I wanted to rent a bike, and thought I would just get it on the island. It never occurred to me that I could get a decent mountain bike from the ferry at a decent price.

Instead, I paid a rajah's ransom for a useless metal bulk that looked like the offspring of tractor and a rake and might, just might, have been a bike in one of its previous metallic reincarnations. A one-gear, wobbly, unstable rusty contraption, rented as if it was made of gold and diamonds.

I had to push it more than ride it. Every bump was pain, every hill penitence. After every ride, my legs were shaking and my arse was in agony.

Oh, but I had so much fun.

I flew down the hills, by the splashing sea, over bays of coral. I went up the hills, up the cliffs, down to the beach. I cycled all the island, and walked half of it. I swam and snorkeled among the pink corals, in the company of heaps of very photographic fish of all shapes and sizes, colorful starfish and hermit crabs.

It’s a small island, but it’s still easy to escape civilization. Actually, civilization on Rottnest consists in a few buildings by the main jetty, a couple of residential neighborhoods and the former army barracks, now refurbished as the Youth Hostel. When I got to the Other Side (Cape Vlamingh*), I was alone.

Alone with the Rats, that is. The island is full of them. “Quokkas”, they’re called. They do look like kangaroo rats; hence the name “Rats’ nest”. They’re the friendliest (and smallest) merry hopping marsupials I’ve met yet. They don’t mind you petting them, and will be very happy to eat whatever green thing you care to give them. Actually, they’re pretty stupid too, which may explain why they’re almost extinct on the continent. No competition or predators on the island.

And that’s about it. Rottnest: a great small place to go to get Away.

I sincerely loved every minute.

* named after the first Dutch guy who bothered to step ashore and give the island a name

Rottnest

Two days. Two days of cycling, swimming, snorkelling and hiking. Two days of blue skies, green hills, white beaches, turquoise crystalline waters and azure seas. Two gorgeous apocalyptic sunsets. Two days alone with Nature itself.

Two days of fun, adventure and freedom. Two days away from everybody and everything I know. Two days Away.

Away.