Places we’ve loved: Perth, Australia

Perth from the Swan River

You know how sometimes you go one place just as a means to get somewhere else? Say you go to a party at a homely poor girl’s house because the beautiful heiress you want to hit on is going to be there. Once there you realize that you prefer the homely poor girl. No, we can’t imagine that either so we may have to drop this metaphor.

The driving reason behind our trip to Australia was to go to Ningaloo Reef to dive with whale sharks. Ningaloo Reef isn’t the easiest place to get to and for us it meant flying via Perth.  Then we would be driving back to Perth to rent a car and go to the Margaret River Valley. But what about Perth? Why was it always the bridesmaid and never the bride? (Maybe just lucky).

So we decided to spend a couple days in Perth before we went back to the other coast and then home! By the time we drove to Perth from the Margaret River area we were only too delighted to turn in our rental car. There really  isn’t any need for a car to see Perth.

On our first day we took a train to Freemantle where Blonde found out she can’t blow anything – definitely not a didgeridoo.

Can’t blow this sucker successfully even with a teacher!

That brings to mind an unverified claim we saw on a postcard in Australia.

Anyone happen to have done research on this?

Whoops, getting the evil eye from Brunette better get back to the joys of Perth!

We returned from Freemantle by water taking the Swan River Cruise (think it was AU25 each) which was a nice way to see Perth. We always like seeing places from the water and this was no exception. Although they did have a free wine tasting on the cruise so we may have been in unusually positive states of mind.

One of the most compelling sights is The Bell Tower which includes the twelve bells of St Martin-in-the-Fields, which apparently have been in existence from before the 14th century.  Supposedly these are the “only known royal bells to have left England”. A lot of ding dongs, several of whom were royal, have left but that doesn’t seem to be what they mean.

The Swan Bell Tower

Perth has a lot of outdoor art which was enjoyed and got a lot of snickers out of to to be fair about it. Our two favorites were the kangaroo family that were our clue that we were near our hotel and a thing we referred to as the “turd-kabob” but suspect that isn’t the official  name.

These kangaroos all look like they need to pee and soon!

We called this the turd-kabob but it’s real name is less fun -the Harmony of Minerals Obelisk

We did get to King’s Park which overlooks the harbor. We stupidly did that on a hop-on-hop-off bus/tram city tour. The tour went by some out of the way and boring places and was expensive. We should have taken a city bus to the park. We would have saved money and time and could have enjoyed more of the park. Oh well, live and don’t learn as we prove over and over again!

King’s Park

King’s Park

As our readers know we are major culture and art buffs and sometimes spend upwards of 15 minutes in museums (if they have good cafes or gift shops) but we actually enjoyed the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Although our stay was put into jeopardy by some very poor behavior on the part of Brunette.

One of the galleries had a Rodin (we think) sculpture of a nude male sort of bending over. Brunette walked right over to the statue’s derriere and made a show of sniffing to see if she detected any sculptural farts. As we laughed ourselves sillier than we already were we were given a very stern look by a very unamused security guard. Of course that meant we tried to suppress our giggles which led to our entire stay in the museum being punctuated loudly by those weird noises you  make when you can’t hold a laugh in any longer.

If you could ignore us, it was an excellent museum. It has an impressive collection of Aboriginal art , a wide variety of visiting exhibits and a nice cafe with free internet. Best of all admission is free although they request that you make some voluntary donation. (They refused to accept Blonde when Brunette tried to “donate” her.)

Our last evening in Perth was the day of THE ROYAL WEDDING of Prince William and Kate Middleton. We watched it in our hotel room (after having previously declared that it didn’t interest us in the least) . Afterwards we went to the nearby Cafe Italia for a hectic but very good dinner. The scene of the royal couple kissing on the balcony was playing on a TV when we were there and everyone did a good natured toast which was nice. (It’s usually so hard to get Aussies to drink alcohol….)

All in all Perth was an unexpected treat of  a city with a lively vibe, pretty scenery and lots of cultural attractions.

If it weren’t for the unresolved charges filed against Brunette for sniffing a statue’s butt we would consider returning. But we really can’t afford to have her be banned from another country.

Cavorting child along Swan River