Perth, Western Australia December 1-9, 2015

So, we left Woody and Chris in Sydney and on we flew to Perth where John was attending a Toxicology Conference. The flight was about 4 hours, like flying from Chicago to LA, and, unlike US airlines, we were fed and watered on this long flight on Qantas. Also, like flying west in the US, we gained time as we flew west landing in Perth well before noon. The date was December 1 and while we didn't see a lot of Christmas decorations in Sydney, Perth's airport was full on Christmas...sort of.

One of the things brought to us from the US (yes, I am saying it was smuggled in) was a nasty upper respiratory virus that Woody struggled with for most of his time with us. With all the tight quarters and car rides, sneezing and coughing, the virus made it's way to me and blossomed in Perth. Ah, the gift that keeps on giving.....

I don't know how Woody kept going, actually looking for walks and physical activity, while he had this bug. I was flattened by it the first few days in Perth. I had not even gotten a cold this year, and was amazed by how great I'd felt all year, but this was a doozy.
Whinging (Australian for whining) aside, I did get out for a few hours each day to see what I could see within walking distance from our hotel.

I was not all that enthused to see Perth, I was OK if it was missed this year, other places seemingly having more interest. Boy, was I wrong! The city itself is very compact and easy to negotiate. The mining industry has had a decade of growth and Perth is the biggest city in WA (Western Australia), where most of the iron ore mines are located. These mega-companies need a place for their headquarters and Perth has reaped the benefits of a booming industry. This boom has unfortunately recently slowed down as China's growth has slowed, they say China sneezes and Australia catches a cold. (I'm stuck on this theme....)

We stayed at the downtown Hilton which was a great mid-town location. I could walk to restaurants, parks, shopping, trains, buses, just about anywhere I needed to go. The only problem was it wasn't convenient for the conference. The conference was at University of Western Australia, a beautiful campus right on the Swan River. We managed without a car for the first 3 days, and we really liked that, public transportation made it easy to get around. We did end up with a rental car at the end of our time because we wanted to get to Fremantle, a little town 25km south of Perth. More on that later.

I was on my own during the day (John actually goes to the conferences) and after slow starts I managed to find the shopping area and main gathering places. Perth has a very young vibe to it, but there is the old side which has been gentrified into appealing facades more attractive to the gen X-er's. There is also money there. How do I know???? There's a whole shopping area with shops like Chanel, Prada, Louis Vitton, Mui Mui, and Tiffany, to name a few. I did not venture into those shops, knowing how crazy the prices would be, but their windows sure were pretty! Most of the shopping is akin to Macy's or Nordstrom in the US, but fun to look as they do things differently marketing wise. I would say the prices are what you'd expect once you do the conversion. ($1AUD=$0.72 USD)

We saw a unique light show which was projected onto the Commonwealth Bank Building during the holiday season, we couldn't photograph it but it looked something like this,

we must have watched the changing colors for 20 minutes. We are easily entertained.

The 3 days in Perth went very quickly and I then found my way back to airport to get a rental car. We had rented an Airbnb unit in South Fremantle and enjoyed the 45 minute drive from Perth to this coastal town. The weather had cooled and was raining when arrived. We were welcomed to a charming villa right off the main road. I was still in the grips of that vicious viral infection and this place had a beautiful bedroom and a day bed where I set up camp. We had enjoyed 80-90 degree weather the whole time we had been gone but now the weather was rainy and a cool 65, a real change for which we had no appropriate clothes. Jennifer Hudson (her real name) told us about an art fair that was on the whole weekend, rain or shine. We headed out and enjoyed the fair. But when the rain ccame, we headed back for the night.

We learned at breakfast the next morning that we could take the train back to Perth from Fremantle, which we wanted to do so John could take in some of the sights. We took the train and landed right downtown in about 30 minutes. We hopped on the Hop On Hop Off bus and despite the rain got a good ride seeing all the tourist things that Perth could offer.

http://www.city-sightseeing.com/documents/tours/567.pdf

We stopped at the Perth Mint for the tour which was recommended in out tour book. It was basically a jewelry store with a short tour which included the pouring of a gold bar. It's the oldest mint in Australia that is still producing coins.

Australia had their own "gold rush" in the late 1800's in Western Australia.  This event put Perth on the map and the tour said getting the mint there was a huge coup for the the area. I'm not sure why they recommended it because the tour was very lack luster, unless you wanted to buy overpriced gold jewlery. John was fascinated by the gold bar pouring, but they didn't allow photographing of the process. (Photos off the internet)  We were both disappointed that no samples of the gold were given.

This is the just what it looked like, then the cooling off, and the bars were created. BTW, they are really heavy!

John wouldn't let me take this souvenir home!

Because of the rainy, cool day, we didn't do the King's Park walk which we thought we would do when we returned to Perth for our flight back to Bundaberg on Monday. Instead, we trained it back to South Fremantle and our cosy little villa.
Unfortunatley we couldn't book the 3rd night at the villa because someone else was booked, NOTE TO SELF, BOOK EARLY! We moved to a beach location in South Fremantle for the 2 last nights, which was also a very nice place.

The last full day in WA was spent going to Rottnest Island, a small island off the Perth/Fremantle coast. This was a short ferry ride (45 minutes) and was crammed full of backpackers on this Monday morning. Rottnest had been recommended as a "not to be missed" in Perth and is home to the Quokka,  another marsupial (very cute!!)

 Hello, little rodent like creature! Quokka's are John's new favorite marsupial!

The trip to Rottnest was great. We got there well before 12 and got a tour around the island stopping at all the high points including seeing seals on the rocks.

We headed back to the mainland by mid afternoon after seeing the whole island. We loved seeing Freemantle by water, you can see why.

We left our Western Australia experience thinking that it would be a great place to return to someday, have to see Broome and the Kimberley's which were too far for us to travel to this time.

Back to Queensland and getting ready for the kid's visit, only a few days away!