I could live in Australia. I know we have only been here a few days but if Perth is anything to go by, things bode well. The city has just two million people. It has wide roads with limited rush hour traffic. There are few people on the trains, even at the busiest of times, and those trains are wide with lots of space for standing if necessary. What’s more the carriages are clean and notices state that if students are travelling with a discounted fare they should stand for adults so they can be seated. Added to this, the streets are litter free!
Of course, speaking the same language helps, but there is so much that is similar to the UK. This includes driving on the left side of the road, and many of the retailer names are familiar. But above all the people are friendly and polite.
What we didn’t expect, given all the problems Australia has had with bush fires, were storms for three days. Those rain droplets come down as stair rods of heavy globules. So on our first day we planned to be inside. Well ‘inside’ was an appropriate word as it happens, as we took ourselves off to jail in the nearby town of Fremantle. The jail was built by convicts to house convicts… from Britain. The country’s aim, according to the prison’s information boards, was ‘overseas nation building’, and in so doing (according to a quote from Charles Darwin) this would make men ‘outwardly honest… converting vagabonds, most useless in one country, into active citizens of another’.
More than 165,000 men, women and children were transported to Australia between 1788 and 1868. Construction of the prison, in which the men were to be detained, ran between 1851 and 1859.
Conditions were cruel and dire. There was enforced hard labour, frequent floggings, executions and solitary confinement – sometimes up to two years. The cells were small, many died of the cold or the heat, or of diseases such as rickets.
It is recognised today that many of the jails, town halls, museums, schools, churches, roads and bridges in Australia were built as the result of convict labour. Fremantle prison is now a World Heritage site.
As the rain continued to sheet down we were off the next day for a boat trip to Rottnest Island, famed for its quokkas – marsupials which look like a cross between a large mouse and tiny kangaroo. When they do move, which is not often seen, they hop around in a similar fashion to the kangaroo but with their front legs also on the ground.
There are estimated to be 12,000 of them, and Rottnest is their native homeland. While numbers may be large, actually finding them in their natural wild habitat is difficult as they hide under low lying bushes of a similar colour to themselves.
The best place to seek them out, sadly, is around the ferry port. This is the main town of just a few shops, restaurants and bars, and unfortunately the quokkas have picked up on human behaviour. However much is said to visitors about the perils of feeding the animals, this practise continues by the few. Quokkas cannot digest human food and it has been found to cut their normal 10 year lifespan by half. A sure sign of eating human’s food is mange, which some of the animals near the eating areas clearly had.
We were due to cycle around the island, but the pouring stair rods resulted in us being offered a coach ride instead. Of course, after days of rain it then stopped, but the coach ride worked out well as we could see some good views of the bays and sandy beaches around the whole island.
Rottness also has a golf course with 60 members, a third being women. Four competitions are held each year, but bear in mind that not all members will reside on the island throughout the year, so attendees will be fewer. We only saw two people on the whole course.
A discussion with the greenkeeper (the only employee, and a job highly sought after) revealed that, without a natural water supply, the course is fed from the island’s waste water – an offshoot from its popular tourism industry. What water there is on the island has an extremely high salt content and at one time was a source for salt production.
The island also has a bowling green, the best kept I had ever seen. However, closer inspection showed it was of artificial grass, but considered a good surface. This was used by tourists rather than club members.
The following day we were off to sip wine and beer under the guise of a boat trip up the Swan River. The sun had at last come out and it gave us a good opportunity to view the river at its best and to see a different side of Perth with large, luxurious, detached properties lining the banks in places. Once off the boat, tastings were plentiful. The first winery offered 15 samplings alone. This was followed by a brewery visit, which was a little more modest – just one small sample of beer. But the choice included some interesting mixes, such as lemon and lime cheesecake IPA brewed with lactose and vanilla bean. Tasty, but memorable only because of its name.
Finally we headed to a chocolate tasting. Again this was a more modest one truffle, but this was followed by chocolate liquors so sweet they will blow your head off. Great with ice cream though.
Alcohol and views around Perth were not the only things we gained on this trip. We met some lovely people, many of whom had British heritage, coming from the UK on the £10 Pom ticket in the 1970s. Their families seem to have chosen well from what we have so far experienced in the very nice area of Perth.
Tomorrow we are taking a three day trip by train from Perth to Adelaide via Kalgoorlie and Nullarbor. The Indian-Pacific train (from the Indian Ocean to Pacific Ocean) does not have wi-fi so it may be a few days before you hear from us again.
Copyright: Words and photos Sue Barnard 2020.