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We flew to Perth from Adelaide, to meet up with the
friends we had last met in Alice Springs on 14th July.
They were in Perth for a week-end’s break and to see CIRQUE DU
SOLEIL, the circus in the photo on the waterfront
This shot was taken from the wonderful Kings Park
botanical gardens.
The compact city centre sits on a sweeping bend of
the pretty Swan River. Shoppers buzz through the Hay Street and
Murray Street Malls and arcades, it’s a pedestrian Shoppers’s
delight! Set in the midst of stunning natural beauty, this vibrant city is
filling up fast with Australians and foreigners coming over for the mining
industry by their thousands. Despite its isolation from the rest of
Australia, this friendly, easy-going city rivals other places like Sydney
and Melbourne for quality of life, with top-class food and wine, vibrant
nightlife a wealth of cultural events and more days of sunshine than any
other capital city in the country.
 
Brian and Josie were staying at Scarborough, one
of the beach resorts just 20 minutes North of Perth. This is the
beach front where we opted to stay in a hotel nearby too, it’s such a
great place to walk along that esplanade in the mornings!
Little did Brian know that 4 days later, he was
admitted to hospital with a burst appendix! Not only could he have
died from peritonitis, but also nearly died from blood clots accumulated
from the operation to clean out his body cavity from the infections of the
peritonitis!
We also had a reunion with Caroline Gittus, not
seen since she was 15 and David was 37! She was David’s neighbour in
Cuffley, Hertfordshire before she moved out to Perth in 2002.
We took as look at Fremantle, the port on the
mouth of the Swan River where Perth is situated. Of
course we had to visit the Maritime Museum
Where the Batavia, built in 1628 in Amsterdam by
the VOC, Dutch East Indies Company has been reclaimed from the sea off the
Western Australian coast.
This photo is of model similar to the
BATAVIA. The Dutch were amongst the first Europeans to regularly ply
this western coast of Australia, from Cape of Good Hope to the China
seas. An Englishman, William Dampier comprehensively charted the
coast in 1688, calling the country ‘New Holland’. But he
reported it to be dry and barren land discouraging attempts at
settlement. But completion from French exploration in the late 18th
Century pushed the British to rethink the region. In 1826, the army
were sent here with a small group of convicts from Sydney to establish a
small military outpost at King George Sound, present day Albany. In
1929, the first British settlers arrived at the Swan River Settlement, now
known as Perth.
FREMANTLE
 
The old settlers cottages here are looking in need
of renovation, unlike the central market, a hive of activity at the
weekends when inside is filled with stands selling food and goods from all
corners of the globe!
Western Australia comprises one-third of the
Australian land mass, and has a small fertile coastal strip in its
southwest corner, which is the area we visited. Further north the
landscape is dry and relatively barren. The
Kimberley’s, where we had begun our Australian trip 3 months ago, is
at the northern western top end of this state.
Our first reunion with Maz and Colin Osborne, not
seen since we all went our separate ways from Tahiti in 2001, whilst they
were completing their circumnavigation on their boat IRONBARK. They
had urged us to visit the Kimberley’s, one of their favourite areas
of Australia, giving us many recommendations of places to visit. They
had just returned from a trip to Belgium and Europe, and kindly allowed us
the use of their house BEFORE their return, now that’s true friends!
Maz not only is learning how to belly dance,
but is loads of fun, here she is displaying her ‘red hat’
part of her attire for the Women’s Club she meets up with on a
regular basis, the motto being that red and  purple are the colours for us to wear as we drift
into our elder ages!
They kindly gave us a great tour around the area
finishing up with a visit to the Swan Valley vineyards. It happened
to be Father’s Day, and one of the wineries had these fabulous
bottles of champagne, filled with pieces of pure gold flake – we did
not succumb!
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