8.3.11 – Free food and suitcases (Perth, Western Australia)

8.3.11 – Free food and suitcases (Perth, Western Australia)

I’m listening to Didjeridu music as Bill is packing in the bedroom.  It’s a challenge, as we’ve acquired quite a lot of stuff during this last eight weeks, but Bill is a miracle packer and he has just emerged with two bulging cases.  I congratulated him and pointed out (just in case he hadn’t noticed) that he had no shorts on.  Unfortunately, he had packed them, so a degree of urgent dredging around the larger case was necessary to restore his dignity.  Tomorrow we will lie on the beach until it’s time to go to their airport, about 6pm Perth time.  We’ve already booked our taxi driver, a pleasant young man called Radek, with a mid-European accent.

Breakfast on the patio

Our villa in Scarborough

This morning, we ate breakfast as usual, sitting at the round glass-topped table on the patio, in the shade of the Frangipani tree.  We were feeling quite organised.  It’s a matter of pride with me to ensure that there is next to nothing going to waste at the end of a holiday, and I knew we had eaten all our food supply neatly down to about four slices of bread, a few teabags and half a tin of spam.  No wastage there then.  Suddenly, our neighbours called to us over the seven foot dividing fence.  They’re flying to Sydney today, and would we like to have their left-over food?  We said ok, assuming we were talking about maybe half a pint of milk and a tin of beans.  Up the path she came, staggering under three loaded bags, packed with a box of large ice-cream, three cucumbers, a huge bag of tomatoes, a sizeable head of broccoli, unopened tins of veg, a jar of honey – and so on and so on.  So now my fridge is full to the gunnels and goodness knows how we’ll get through it in 24 hours.  Maybe we can unload it onto the new neighbours next door who arrived this afternoon...

Perth from King's Park

King's Park

Perth is built around the confluence of two rivers – the Swan and the Canning.  They form wide tranquil lakes before exiting to the Indian Ocean via a narrow channel.   

King’s Park is perched on Mount Eliza, a green oasis in looking down upon the blue lakes and the tree-lined suburbs, as well as the inevitable glassy covered spikes of the office blocks in the CBD.  The high rise nature of all the CBD’s we have seen – so similar to those in the USA and Canada – does tend to make the cities all look very similar from a distance.  Within them, pretty 19^th. Century buildings cower at the bottom of these immense structures, which rear up all around them.  These spires glitter and gleam, and have all the bling of rather over-ornamented ladies out for a night on the town.  

Perth by twilight

We were booked on a twilight cruise of the Swan River, which was to be the highlight of our last day.  But arriving at the office, they apologetically informed us that we were the only passengers booked on the large ship, and so the cruise had been cancelled.  As a measure of their distress about this, they produced two bottles of wine for us.  Laden with yet more nutritional largesse, we turned away, and noticed a ferry going to and fro across the bay.  For a tenth of the price, we sailed over and back, returning as the lights came on in the city and the setting sun coloured the sky behind the trees on Mount Eliza.  

Better go now and start making a huge salad to be washed down with those bottles of wine......