Australia

G'day Cobbers! We've finally reached Australia and following a thankfully unscary 5 hour flight we're tucked up in a hostel in Perth. Sam's been practising her Ozzie accent for months now and sounds exactly like Kath and Kim and even I'm sounding less like an Indian Scotsman, so we were eager to meet our first proper Australians and hear the accents first hand. Walking through the terminal at Perth we spied the Customs officers, here we go we thought, its gonna be 'dinkum' this and 'galah' that, but on getting nearer, the Passport fella turned out to be a Geordie! Great, so we waited in line and were called over to the man next to him to check our passports, this time.....no, Irish! After having had our bags x-ray'd and sniffed by dogs to check we hadn't brought in any flora, fauna or food substances (I smuggled in some Bornean mud on my trainers and Sam had some Thai chocolate), we proceeded to get the shuttle bus into town, driven by....a bloke from Reading who as soon as he'd ascertained we were from England, proceeded to do Little Britain (yah i know) impressions all the way to the hostel, great.... We walked into the reception and approached the counter to find, yup another English man working there. Unbelievable :) Later that night we managed to find some authentic Ozzies, down the pub. It was great to have some beer out of a pint glass, but not quite so great paying UK prices. We managed to sample our way through some Oz lager, Tooheys, very nice indeed and one i've already forgotten, cause it tasted a bit farty :(

Some fast facts for you: Australia is thirty times bigger than the UK, which means we've got a lot of driving on our hands. In all that space there are only 20 million people and the vast majority of them live on the east coast. The capital is Canberra, not Sydney and the currency is the Australian dollar and there's 2.5 dollars to the pound.
Perth, the capital of Western Australia (map), is said to be the most isolated capital of the world. We have a few days to explore the city, where 80% of the population of Western Oz live, before we take to the open road. Extensive research and a few warning words from Tommy led us to hiring, rather than buying a camper van. Travellers Autobarn seemed like a good option and we've gone for this little bundle of luxury to provide shelter, warmth and wheels for the next month while we explore Australia's Western coastline. Yipee! No more herding about with a coloured sticker and a load of 'zany' travellers for us!!

Perth is an absolutely beautiful city, filled with quiet clean streets, some gorgeous skyscrapers and some really beautiful parks. Wandering around its hard to believe you're in a city, there's so few people about, there's quite a few cars driving about, so maybe just no-one walks? When you get right into the center there's people about in the main shopping arcades and in the huge Kings park there were a lot of people enjoying the sun, but otherwise it seems a quiet place. What's especially weird is the way that everything seems to close dead on 5 o'clock, maybe it's cause we're used to every shop in Asia being open till at least 10pm, but it makes it even quieter. Walking around town we've noticed a couple of disturbing things about fashion in Perth, the majority of shops are selling clothing straight out of the 80's and there also seem to be a large amount of Goths slouching about, particularly near the church. Very odd.
It's spring time on this side of the world, which should provide some respite from the tropical heat and downpours of Asia and being spring everything has that sharp, vibrant looking quality about it, the flowers are all out, the sky is imaculately blue and massive. There's a ridiculous amount of trees here, I've never seen so many different types all in one place and also so many birds about, including brightly coloured parrots, which we were amazed to see flying about, they're probably like pigeons here, but they look fantastic.

We've done loads of walking since we got here and yesterday ended up at the Museum of Western Australia. Among the usual stuffed animal section and geological rocks section (yawn) was a very interesting exhibition about aboriginal culture. It was nice to get a bit of a history lesson about the region, but was also fairly sobering stuff. The usual white man finds new a country and then steals all the land killing most of the indiginous inhabitants type story. On top of this as well though, was a goverment led initiative in the 1930's to try and breed out the Aborigines through inter-racial marrige, believe it or not, this carried on until the 70's through the forced (usually secret) relocation of Aboriginal kids under false pretences to white families. As if all that wasn't bad enough, there was a Goverment department called 'Aborigines and Fisheries', as they weren't classed as human, but came under Fauna and Flora! They have a National Sorry day here every year, which gives people a chance to apologise for what amounts to genocide, by trying to select indigenous people out of Australian society. Typically the PM John Howard doesn't recognise the day and won't apologise on behalf of the goverment for the past, so you see, things are the same all round the world aren't they?

Today has been spent lazing about at King's Park which is absolutely massive and incredibly beautiful! We walked all round the park through areas of bushland, nice picnic areas with families having barbies, no doubt drinking some stubbies too :) The place was so well kept, amazingly well landscaped with views across Perth and the River Swan. Lots of fountains, ponds, walks, gorgeous flowers and lawns, a great place to get away to, not that there seemed anything bad enough to escape from.
We're all geared up for our travels round Western Oz now, all we need to do is buy some snags from the supermarket to stock up the little fridge in the van and we'll be off.
Finally to end on some sad news, Steve Irwin died today, a massive cult figure in Oz and round the world, killed by a sting ray, no doubt he was taunting the sting ray until it lashed out at him.
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Perth Slideshow






Film of the week: Snakes on a Plane

Absolutely Superb!






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