The Most Isolated City in the World

So, three barbecues in, I have now seen a little more of Perth itself and it doesn't feel that isolated. The Western Australian Museum is worth a visit for the exhibition on aborigines in Western Australia and for checking you know what all the poisonous spiders look like but not if you want to avoid school children. The Art Gallery of Western Australia was much more impressive, I quite liked the paintings of early Perth and Fremantle, but much smaller than I expected. (ie about the right size to walk around, as opposed to far too big to see properly). We also did some exploring of South Perth and spotted some black swans, the symbol for WA, and Guildford, an older suburb with good cafes! It's amazing how absolutely every older building is sign posted and pointed out.

We also paid a visit to the Caversham Wildlife Park just to ensure that I saw some Australian animals. We felt a little out of place with all the under tens but I got to stroke a koala, sit with a wallaby and feed kangaroos. An unexpected favourite may have been the Superb Fairy Wren though, as it is so familiar but completely bright blue! They also had quite a good farm show with lots of sheep shearing, a very impressive primary school teacher who learnt to whipcrack in two attempts and a bunch of kids that got pushed over and trampled on by hungry lambs. All quite good fun actually!

This weekend was then spent camping. Everybody I've met has tried to terrify me with snake/spider/shark stories, to varying degrees of success, and talks about camping a lot. Darren has a camper trailer so six of us went two and a bit hours north to near Jurien. Izzy and I were amused by the sign 'Lobster Fish Shack, Left Turn, 35 minutes', impressed by the expanse of scrub (quite pretty as we're at the end of spring) and less impressed by only seeing kangaroos that had already died... When we arrived we were staying right next to the beach that looked like this:

We were also staying with Darren's sister and husband who make camper trailers, as well as with a group of other campers nearby. Because Darren had brought Poms along (!), after a barbecue and discovering that you can talk about camper trailers just as much as you can about boats, it started raining which soon turned into an extremely impressive storm. Camper trailers move in the wind much less comfortably than boats! Sunday morning was then spent swimming, playing cricket and reading on the beach.

Then after packing up, we went to the Pinnacles.These are all over W A brochures and, essentially, are limestone formations that have appeared as the sand has eroded away. There are masses of them and they are quite impressive in their huge number. A good stop off on the way home! Off to Melbourne early tomorrow morning but back in W A in December!