Last day in Perth

Well,put it down to travelling too far in too short a space of time, but we really stuffed up last night. After sitting in the airport for 2 hours, we finally went to check in about 11pm and they told us we were a day early. Couldn’t believe it. Both of us had checked the flight times but neither had noticed the day was wrong. We had it in our heads that we were travelling home to NZ late on Sunday night. Wrong! We’d handed in our rental car so went to get it back and discovered that we’d handed it in a day early too, so somewhere along the line we’d gone astray.

So another day in Perth. We tried to change tickets and go to Brisbane seeing as we were ready, but weren’t allowed.

Today was sunnier and warmer. We spent a couple of hours in the local art galleries, which was great. We have nothing like that variety in our small town. Saw some amazing pieces of work and a lot of contemporary aboriginal art, as well as a very odd movie in PICA. Anyone living in Perth, go upstairs in PICA and watch Marco’s movie. I still can’t work out whether it was supposed to be tongue in cheek, but it will stay with you. Lol.

King’s Park was inviting in the sun and although we had several downpours, it didn’t seem to stop people from sailing and jet skiing. There were loads of people in King’s Park. We took in the day time view over the city and climbed the DNA tower, modelled on the helix of DNA.

We took the Fremantle road to see if we could tour the submarine featured earlier, at the Maritime museum, but the tour was full. The E-shed markets were on, but there were a waste of time – all imported Asian trinkets. It’s a shame they don’t do a local craft market.

As the sun had come out, we went back to Cottesloe Beach to take a look. There were kids as young as 8 on surfboards or boogy boards, as well as adults. We travelled north for a look at Hillary’s harbour and wathced the sun go down, and then went as far as the Marmion highway goes before turning round and finding dinner at Joondalup.

The signposts are strange here. One minute the road is numbered, the next it has a name and if you didn’t know it had a name you start to wonder if you’re on the wrong road. I have no sense of direction, but Dave is usually pretty good. However, several times we ended up on the right road going in the wrong direction, or turned off because the directions had vanished when we were on the right road all the time. We are just getting used to it after several days.

Now we are back at the airport and this time we are going to Brisbane.