I flew to Darwin today. Was going to Cairns but it didn't cost that much extra to go to Darwin along the way really, so I thought why not. Its not as hot in Darwin at the moment as it was in Perth but the humidity makes it feel so much worse. There's barely any point putting clean clothes on since you sweat so much.. why waste the money doing laundry.. honestly!
Brian hired a 4 seater plane so all 3 of us could go to Rottnest island for the day. While Brian wasn't looking I took control for a while on the sly. I don't think he noticed. ;)
When we got there we hired bikes and spent the day riding around the island, stopping for a swim on one of the beaches. The island has lots of Quokkas, they are about the size of a cat and are almost like a cross between a rat and kangaroo I suppose, they're quite small and cute and they are everywhere on the island.
Today Brian and I went up for a flight in his plane, we flew over Rockingham and Mandurah along the coast and back again for an hour or so. I haven't been up in a light aircraft since when I was the air cadets when I was younger, good fun and I might have taken control for a little while while Brian wasn't looking. ;)
In the evening we went into Perth CBD for an even called 'place des anges', where we basically had 2 tons of feathers dropped on us! It was totally bizarre but they had these guys dressed in white moving along wires between the buildings to music and dropping feathers and having pillow fights, flying inflatable angels and feather cannons.. The performance was cool, it lasted an hour or so and then at the end when the feather cannons went off they played funky music and everyone just went a bit mental, knee deep in feathers! Strange but good! Here's an article about it; http://m.news.com.au/nationalnews/fi963210.htm
I found this video on youtube that shows it better than my crappy little camera did.
Brian let me borrow his car so I went on a road trip south of Perth for a week. I did over 2000km and went to;
Dunsborough
Margaret river
Walpole
Denmark
Albany
Esperance
Kalgoorlie
And many little ghost towns in between the above
Its like going back in time in some of the places I went through. There's hardly anyone there and everything seems really old. Many of the fuel stations are private little ones where a guy fills up for you. I was in Denmark on Saturday afternoon in the town centre and almost everything was closed and there was nobody around, at all!
I spent a couple of nights sleeping on the back seat of the car and the other nights I stayed in the YHA hostels.
The first night (in Dunsborough) I spent on the back seat of the car because the hostel there was fully booked and the motels are really expensive. I parked the car near the beach on the street in a free parking space and crashed out. I woke up in the middle of the night and wondered why the inside of the car was flashing.. I looked up over the back seat of the car and saw a police car about 200 metres away and I thought I could expect a knock on the window at any moment since its slightly illegal to 'camp' like that - plus I actually didn't bring my driving licence (clever me) with me so I was extra paranoid about that. Anyway, I fell asleep again waiting for the knock on the window or the police car to drive off and just woke up at 8am with an aching neck.
All the places I visited were really nice but the best place I visited has to be Esperance. Its a nice town with some excellent beaches and just 45km down the road you have cape le grande where I saw the best beaches Ive ever been to and there's hardly anyone there (at this time of year at least). I stayed in a Esperance for 2 nights and could quite happily have stayed much longer. The YHA there is right at the waterfront, it great. I met some crazy guys there who were cycling from Perth to Sydney! Rrrrespec'
The last stop was Kalgoorlie which is a massive gold mining town. I saw the biggest mining site they have there, the superpit - which is just the most insane hole in the ground Ive ever seen, the huge vehicles at the bottom were like ants.
Kalgoorlie is also famous for having a red light zone with brothels all along Hay street for the miners, which happens to be where my hostel was! Brian told me you can do a tour of the Langtrees brothel, but unfortunately the place was closing down and being converted into a boutique hotel so I didn't get a chance to do the tour. There were only two brothels left and as I walked by to take a picture I caught a glimpse of one of the 'girls' and it wasn't pretty so if that's anything to go by then its no wonder all the brothels have closed down. :P
I went swimming with wild dolphins at Rockingham today. We left the pier and saw dolphins within a few minutes. We got really close to them in the water, and got the dolphins jumping out of the water when we sped off in the boat as they all came up to play in the surf behind the boat. At the end we stopped for a bit of snorkeling and swimming and I even got to have a go on a water scooter which was good fun, apart from being electrocuted a few times by the shark protector they made me wear.
Went to see Brian's plane at Jandakot airport (weather was not good for flying that day though)
Went to Mandurah
Saw a huge pelican, among other things
Went down swan river on Simon and Brian's boat
Had pizza and a few beers
Watched the Chinese new year fireworks from the river
Wondered about the poor dog who was aboard a boat with two guys in budgie smugglers who appeared to be cleaning the surfaces in their boat before the fireworks started.. howwwoooooo! I thought you were supposed to keep pets in doors during fireworks displays, not trap them on a boat amidst some strange pre firework budgie smuggling operation..
Strolled around the Chinese new year celebrations in Northbridge
Got caught on the big screen and had a caption put over me! (I'm really a super agent)
Ran into a crowd of people holding up cards, screaming "I - HAVE - ALREADY - COME".. which was interesting.
Borrowed a bike and went for a ride along Swan river
The day started off ridiculously hot, not a cloud in the sky, so we went to Cottesloe beach for a swim to cool down. In the evening we had a BBQ and a load of Simon and Brian's friends came to partake. After the BBQ we walked to watch the Australia day fireworks from across swan river, but just as we left it started to rain a little.. then a little more until we got to the spot where we would watch from and then a huge thunder storm started! So I'm stood there in shorts and a t-shirt with a cold beer in a thunder storm getting saturated watching the fireworks! It was actually quite refreshing though.
Flew to Perth today. I had planned to stay with Simon and Brian, another couple of guys I had met in India. Simon picked me up from the airport and dropped me at their place. I was knackered after having only a couple of hours sleep and landing in a different timezone so I just chilled out and slept for most of the day.
A few days before I left Melbourne I received this text message from Simon;
"I hope you like hot weather, because Perth is headed towards a very hot week ahead. 38 degrees and above most days."
It had been relatively hot in Melbourne but not like this!
On my last day in Melbourne Tegan and I went to another zoo, Healesville sanctuary. The best bits were;
Koalas
Kangaroos, which we got to feed and stroke
Wallabys
Awesome bird of prey show
Baby Tasmanian devils
In the evening we went out for a Chinese at Southbank and then watched the evening fire show along the river. When we got home we played pool until about 2am, went to bed at 2:30 after packing and had to get up at 5am for my flight to Perth!
