Yes folks! I am writing this post from the capital of Western Australia – Perth. It is a first for me, I hadn’t been to Perth before, and Western Australia was the only state or territory of Australia I hadn’t visited. Well, now that has been rectified!
A few days ago my wife and I boarded a Qantas flight across the country of around 2,700 kilometres. It went pretty smoothly after some issues getting to the Value Car Park (Google Maps was NO help) and I will be doing a post about that singular experience at some point. But once bag drop was achieved, it went pretty smoothly and after a four hour flight we found ourselves further from Melbourne but still in Australia than we have ever been!
I’ve found the city really nice. I was told by ex-Perthites that there wasn’t much to do, but in the two full days we’ve had here we’ve managed to visited the highly recommended Perth Mint where we saw molten gold being poured to create a bar, checked out the Boola Bardip or Western Australian Museum, travelled up a bell tower, explored King’s Park and the Botanic Gardens and today taken a tour of Optus Stadium, probably the newest stadium in the country of any real size.
We have a decent hotel nearby the Swan River with a very spacious room, and honestly it’s just good to get away from work and Melbourne for a week. Of course, there will be vlogs and blogs to follow next year about this little excursion. But today I wanted to share some initial thoughts and a handful of photos.
Generally Perth has a relaxed vibe, and the downtown area is a little quiet I guess. I was chatting with some Perth locals at Optus Stadium after my tour and they mentioned that people tend to gravitate to a couple of suburban hubs since covid and that many people have not returned to office jobs, preferring to work from home. And that’s certainly the case too in Melbourne, but I don’t spend a lot of time in the city there so it really becomes apparent when I visit a place like Perth.
But the public transport is pretty decent – it’s mostly buses but there is a train network. The buses are pretty frequent and some of them are free. It’s a clean and friendly city too, there are loads of people from different parts of the world too but we have been surprised by hearing a fair bit of Japanese and British accents. It’s a very well laid out place at first glance – and the precinct around the Optus Stadium is very well done and I’ve done nearly 30,000 steps in two days without it feeling like I’ve been walking much.
So all in all it’s been a great start to our time here. The only downside has been the weather. We left to 30 degree days in Melbourne and it’s been about 16 degrees here, which was not expected. We are expecting it to warm up over the next few days with plans to visit Fremantle and Rottnest Island on two of the four remaining days we have. The other two days we will see, we have a couple of options but are not in a rush to do loads of things. There’s a nice pool here so if it warms up by Tuesday or Wednesday we might just relax at the hotel for a day. Anyways, we have options!
Will report on the rest of our time here next Sunday! For now, I will sign off and say – take care wherever you are in the world and… May the Journey Never End!
