Wednesday in Perth
I'm writing these entries offline and pasting them in, so I hope they make sense. Here's our last two days.
The rest of Monday we continued to see how the Nullarbor Plain changes over its thousands of kilometres. Saltbush seems to be the only growing thing that can hold on in most areas, but even that gave up to red sand in some places. From time to time we would see towers that could have been for transmission I suppose. Once we saw one that had been given up to bird nests. Near that track every few kilometres was some kind of maintenance building flanked by a solar panel array.
Monday evening we stopped at Kalgoorlie for a bus tour of the mining city Kalgoorlie-Boulder, home of the largest open pit gold mine in the world, which we saw lit up and doing business as it does round the clock. The city has a marvellous number of restored and protected turn of the century buildings.
Overnight we entered the marginal plain area and another world. As we neared the end of the plain we had seen cattle, then finally real fields of grazing sheep. The landscape then changed again to rocky hills, lushly forested -- saw another kangaroo. We followed a river known for its whitewater rafting at other times of the year. The sudden appearance of water puddles and reservoirs was startling after so much desert. We pulled into Perth just after 9 am.
We had a wait at the train station for our ride and waited again for our hotel room to be ready, but meanwhile found the local internet cafe and started to explore the central business district, which we seem to be right in the middle of. Later in the afternoon, we found two major outdoor malls within a block of the hotel, swarming with people. We dined at a Belgian cafe across the street: Belgian beer, mussels and of course waffles with double cream for dessert.
On Wednesday we were picked up about 8:15 for our bus tour of Perth. Our driver was very entertaining and knowledgeable about the sites and history. Best spot was our stop at the botanical gardens in King's Park, where we had lots of time to take a treetop walk overlooking the city. Very nice gift shop there, too, with excellent prints and pottery. The afternoon part of the tour took us to the ferry docks for a cruise on the Swan River to Fremantle (about an hour and a half), past the millionaires' houses on the river. Fremantle is an interesting collection of period buildings, souvenir shops, restaurants and markets (none open today). Lots of bookstores. We came back by bus, taking a scenic route along the coast for a bit to see some of the beach stretching along this part of the Indian Ocean.