Around the West in 90-Odd Days: Days 64-71 (5-12 Sep) Really & Virtually in Perth

We have arrived! Perth is to WA what New York is to the USA. I think. At least, it makes me want to sing “New York, New Yooork!” and then I remember that’s a whole other country. But it certainly sets new benchmarks for a civilised city here in Australia, with dedicated drive-thru coffee bars (Zarraffa’s)! It also has franchise food chains I’ve never heard of – eg. Dome. Similar to McDonald’s but with breakfast menu items such as Eggs Benedict. I like this place.

Having cousins in high places, we got to stay in the exclusive suburb of The Vines up north for a few days, where the large acreage homes are surrounded by vineyards, and lots of little establishments that sell only wine, or cheese, or chocolate, or organic strawberries. The streets are named things like Bordeaux Lane, Chateau Place, Chardonnay Drive, Sauvignon Ave, Champagne Terrace, etc. From there we had to follow the foodie trail down to the lower plains of Perth. We may have detoured in to cheese and chocolate places for taste testing and subsequent spontaneous splurging. We may also have gradually growing girths.

While The Vines was an exquisite place to stay, we were looking for somewhere a little closer to the city for the latter part of the week. The van park closest to the city had the following Google Review: “This Caravan park is the lowest, filthiest caravan park I have ever seen in Australia....When our family stayed at this place for four days back in 2012 we were under siege by the cops trying to arrest an armed meth dealer that had a separate caravan as its lab...”. There were other reviews, but none as positive as this. As adventurous as it sounded, we decided to sacrifice more exciting blog fodder in favour of a more reputable van park slightly further out. We scored lovely neighbours, Martin and Faye from Melbourne.

Thursday we headed into town, stoked to discover that a bus from directly outside our caravan park went directly into the city centre. We trotted through the famous King’s Park, enjoying the plant species collection from every part of WA, many currently in blossom. Seeds from every species are collected for growing in the park, and freeze dried for a seed bank here in WA, and a seed bank in London (just in case London or Perth is destroyed in some future cataclysmic event). In July 2008 there was even a 750 year old boab tree uprooted from the Kimberley and transferred by truck 3,200 kilometres south to the Park, no small feat at 36 tonnes, 14 metres high and eight metres wide (branch span; the trunk measured 2.5 metres in diameter). A new bridge had to be built on a section of the highway to enable the tree to make its journey. It is still in recovery, but seems to be making progress (the tree, not the bridge. I don’t know how the bridge fared).

Next it was time for a photo op in the Park with the statue of great great (great?) uncle Johnny (Sir John Forrest, explorer, politician and Australia’s first Baron). He is ageing well.

On Friday we visited Freo (Fremantle). First stop was the Visitor’s Centre for maps, etc, which I obtained while Dave wandered off. I loitered around the town square searching for a glimpse of my errant husband, when a guy sitting at an outdoor café nearby called out “Oi, he went THAT way!”. Either we both really looked like tourists, or even strangers know we were meant to be together.

Freo was an amazing, trendy, happening place, but we started out there very confused. Dave wanted to revisit the “old jail” he had seen on two previous trips, and I duly directed him to the Fremantle Prison, a famous and amazing historic complex that sits above the city with high stone walls and is hard to miss. But Dave insisted this was not the old jail, which he remembered looking over water. And he’d never seen this tourist attraction called the Fremantle Prison (although it had been built in 1851). Our confusion cleared considerably when we discovered The Round House on the sea front – a single, small building which was built in 1830 and initially used as a jail. Suddenly it all makes sense - I’m the Time Traveller’s Wife.

Saturday I managed to get in a visit to Perth’s Art Gallery (excellent) while Dave meandered around parks and foreshores taking pictures of seascapes, landscapes, squirrels … wait, what? We don’t have squirrels in Australia. Except in the zoo. And except for those who have escaped from the zoo… if Australia has feral squirrels overrunning the place in a few years, remember that it all started here.

Lots of interesting and exciting things happened in Perth. We had a busy social calendar, meeting up with cousins and their spouses and children and a variety of other friends for dinner engagements. A highlight for Dave was being given a test drive of the new Canon 5D Mark IV camera in the city, released only the day before. We got up close and personal with two wedding stretch limos whose doors opened upwards (like the Delorean in Back to the Future). Dave went out for a photo shoot and came back with a new friend/kindred spirit of the photography kind (a reptile breeder who specialises in underwater photography - Hi, Shane!).

We discovered that King’s Park had been under siege a week before by Pokémon players, which was not appreciated by the gardeners. Our last night in Perth we heard that a guy fell in the lake at 1.30am trying to catch a Pokémon from a jetty, and had to be rescued by the police (real police, not virtual police). If you don’t understand all this – don’t worry, neither do we. It has something to do with the virtual world merging with the real world, a bit like that movie Enchanted, except that you get sucked through the porthole of your smartphone, and cartoon creatures that look like squirrels are running around … wait, what? Yes, you read that correctly, there are now both real and virtual squirrels on the loose in Perth. I know, right?!

Last but not least, we became a bit obsessed with watching car number plates. Because they are a THING over here. WAussies love their personalised plates, which usually manage to incorporate bad spelling and grammar. Just a few that we’ve seen: 4ME2NJOY, WITCH 1, MYNZ BETA, EX-NAVY, BOUGHT A (on a Jeep), HELLUSIN8. If you work out what that last one means, drop us a line (yes, we have the answer).