Tag Archives: Perth

This is our last full day in Australia before flying out to Bali tomorrow. It’s sunny so we resume our walk around Perth. Sterling Gardens is a beautifully-tended little park in front of the courthouse, the oldest building in Perth dating back to 1837. Tall palms and majestically towering figs makes it a lovely spot for a picnic lunch. The modern Snow Bell Tower on the river front a short stroll from the gardens, houses 18 bells, 12 of which are the original 15th century bells from St Martins-in-the-fields in London. The bells were gifted to Perth in return for ore to make replacement bells; the originals apparently being too heavy and tinny for the church’s bell tower. The tower provides good 360 degree views of Perth city centre and the expansive Snow river as it snakes through from the suburbs on its way to the sea. For an $11 entrance fee it’s also possible to view the campanologists at work and the bells in action.  

The walk takes us up Jacob’s Ladder, a steep, zig-zagging staircase that leads to King’s Park. Apparently the stairs are a regular haunt of exercise fanatics who run up and down them as part of their fitness routines. It takes me all my time to walk up them, so jogging up doesn’t bear thinking about. 

King’s Park is probably the equivalent of London’s Hyde Park – and immense open space in the edge of the city centre – but considerably more beautiful. With superb views of the city and the Snow River stretching out below, the 4 sq km park stretches all the way back up to the inner suburbs of West Perth, Subiaco and Shenton Park and is a delightful combination of wild bush, beautifully manicured lawns and tree-lined avenues.

Back at the hostel we sort out our stuff and donate the food and cooking utensils we are not planning to take with us to the kitchen. There is a free food box in the kitchen and nothing stays in it for very long; our spices, lentils and rice is quickly snapped up by a young Taiwanese girl who needed a bit of assistance identifying the lentils and some of the spices. The rest of our gear is packed and ready to go and our backpacks are considerably lighter for having culled our possessions a few days ago. Tomorrow we will be leaving for the airport at 9.30 am.

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Rain and more rain. And it’s chilly too. Winter really seems to have set in. We start a self-guided walk around Perth city centre but are forced to abandon it as the heavens open. We seek refuge in a cafe for an hour or so until the worst is over, but it remains drizzily all day. So we change tack and go to the book exchange; buy a guide book for Indonesia. The latter is a particularly well-timed purchase as we discover that on-arrival visas are only issued for 30 days and can’t be extended. We had been planning on staying for at least six weeks. Just as well we checked before booking our onward flight to Dehli or we could have been in for a costly mistake! Now the revised plan is to spend a month in Indonesia; flying into Bali and out of Jakarta which should make for an interesting experience travelling across Java. We fly to Delhi on 12th June and on to London on 28th August. Our return home now seems to be not so far off.

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It’s bye bye to Peg today, our home for the last two months. Peg has always seemed a more friendly name than the rather aggressive ‘Hostile Takeover’ as dubbed by Wicked. Peg because the clothes pegs used to fix things to the outside of the van were often left clipped to the little gutter around the roof as we travelled along. We drop our gear at the Britannia on William, a rambling Victorian building in the heart of ‘China Town’, with friendly staff, spanking new ablutions and a spotless kitchen. We then head out to Bursford to put the van through the car wash and take it back to the Wicked depot. The young English girl in charge of the office is very candid about the companies failings; allegedly it is well-known throughout the company that the Darwn office doesn’t service the vehicle it sends out and noone sees fit to do anything about it! What’s more according to her when the police slap an unroadworthy notice on any of the vans, the company simply changes the registration plates and re-registers the van rather than undergoing the mandatory road test. Another little bit of information we gleaned – each van has a spare key under the wheel arch. Good for Wicked because they don’t have to come out when drivers lose their keys; good for thieves too, no need to make a nasty mess smashing the window to get in. A final irony is the sad and sorry tale of our Wicked encounter – the reg0 ((road tax) had run out several days before the end of our hire! My advice? Don’t hire from Wicked.

The transport system is excellent here. Like other Australian cities a bus ticket lasts for two hours and during that time you can make as many bus trips as you like. On top of which all travel within the central free transit zone is – free. Boris Johnston take note!

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Lovely Perth! Full of parks, green space and trees all kissed by the warm winter sunshine. Today sees us back in the CBD (Central Business District in Aussie parlance, city centre to the rest of us) with it’s wide streets an eclectic mix of gleaming ultra-modern high rise, Victorian gothic churches and grand 19th century public buildings that wouldn’t look out of place in London. As well as several examples of remnants of the old incorporated into the facades of the new and a rather twee recreation of an old English street scape vaguely reminiscent of The Shambles. Our first port of call is to the Indian Consulate office in West Perth very near King’s Park. The consulate employee is late arriving, fails to apologise for keeping us waiting and is rather rude when we explain that we have come to pick up our visas. Apparently we have the wrong office and are instructed to read the notice on the door! Once we find the correct office, our passports and visas are soon forthcoming, in fact we must be the only people applying by post and collecting in person as they know who we are when we walk through the door!

We spend the rest of the afternoon locating our hostel accommodation in Northbridge and the Wicked depot in preparation for tomorrow’s drop off. True to form, Wicked have provided us with the wrong address for their depot in Perth, which has moved from Northbridge to Bursford – a suburb on the way out towards the airport. So our carefully laid plans to have our accommodation within walking distance of the depot have been thwarted!  

We round off the day with a fish and chip supper, and ice cream in MacDonalds before settling down to our last night in the van.

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