Did you know you can get a £43 flight from Bali to Perth including food and baggage? Unfortunately this meant a 2.30am wake up in Ubud..at least there's no time difference. Denpasar Airport is brand new but the staff were so inefficient that I ended up being in a huge rush despite arriving in plenty of time. You also have to pay to leave the country which I always think is a bit cheeky!
I arrived in Perth at 10am to find the shuttle bus to the city the domestic terminal at 10am and the next one isn't until 2pm. Luckily there's also a regular bus to the centre which turned out to be much cheaper. The bus driver didn't seem sure that there would be anywhere to leave my luggage for the day which sounded crazy in such a large city. Sure enough there were lockers at the main rail station which I found after persuading several ticket inspectors I wasn't trying to board a train, just dump my very heavy bags.
I spent the rest of the day wandering around in a bit of a daze and being generally horrified at the prices in Australia (which coming from Indonesia were even more of a shock). I was staying with my friend Kellie until the Sunday and she picked me up after work.
The next day I met up with a family friend, Mick, who has lived in Perth for years. We took the public ferry across the water to South Perth (good for photos of the Perth skyline) and then got a train to Fremantle, or Freo as it's known locally. I don't know if it was just because it was a weekday, but the town felt eerily quiet. We had delicious fish and chips by the water. After a quick look around, we returned to Perth. In the evening Kellie and I went to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner; Perth is a very international city, especially the area called Northbridge though it still has a reputation for being a bit dangerous after dark.
When you travel for a while, you realise the world is a pretty small place. Two friends from my Indonesia trip were also in Perth at the same time and we met up on the Friday. We went to the Art Gallery of Western Australia which was showing a special exhibition of Dali, Picasso and others on loan from the MOMA in New York. The basement of the Gallery is a former court which still retains its original features, definitely one of the more interesting settings I've seen. We had a nice lunch at a reasonably priced place by Perth standards - the city is expensive even for Australia due to the mining boom. If you don't earn mining wages then life could be fairly tough. Later we walked to Kings Park which is a lovely place close to the centre with fantastic views of the city. In the evening I met up with Kellie and went for a few drinks. The centre used to be deserted at evenings and weekends; now some trendy places have opened up though you could easily walk past if you didn't know they were there.
It was time to move on to another friend's house for my last night in Perth (travelling a lot means having friends in lots of places!) The weather was beautiful, around 36c and we took a trip out on their boat. There are some amazingly expensive areas overlooking the water. We had a barbecue and beers in the evening, it wouldn't be Australia without a barbie cooked steak!
The next morning one of the girls took me to Cottisloe and Scarborough beaches. I braved going in the sea though the sight of helicopters patrolling the area for sharks is a bit disconcerting! I only went a few metres in and the sea was refreshingly cool on what was another 30c + day.
Sadly that brought my time in Perth to an end though I want to come back in the future and explore more of Australia's largest state.