Perth

Perth

We arrived late afternoon and were surprised to find our hotel was serviced apartments, but it had a bar restaurant in the same building, with several other restaurants in the area. We looked around but weren’t very impressed, it was a newish up market area but we settled on an Italian a few hundred yards away.

Next day we picked up our car, usual issue with insurance, so paid $A30 per day to cut out the risk of having to pay $A3,300 if we had to be towed in for any reason.

We drove to Freemantle and spent ages finding a parking spot since Western Australia has almost no on street disabled spaces; you have to pay and get double the time.

After a look around the town centre, this was developed quite a time before Perth itself and is a very characterful area with some lovely cafes.

Down to the busy harbour with it’s lighthouse at the end of a mole and some sculptures of fishermen.

We had a late lunch of fish and chips at Cicerello’s which boasted the best fish and chips in Western Australia, they weren’t bad but there are better in Chelmsford.. The owner come over to chat seeing me doing a Sudoku and said he couldn’t get his head round them.

 There was a replica boat of those used by the first settlers, how they managed up to a six month voyage going round the Cape of Good Hope and sailing across the Roaring Forties is beyond me. Behind the restaurant was another sculpture entitled Coastguard and some wag has placed an empty soft drink bottle in it.

We had a look around the Marina which still has a working fishing fleet, and as we were leaving saw the oddest ship I have ever seen, it is a car carrier travelling to and from China and Japan.

The next day we travelled north to the Caversham Wildlife Park in a just being built suburb of Whiteman some 30 miles from central Perth. They had a pretty wide range of Australian fauna, the only major one missing was the Cassowary even they were advertised, their enclosure was empty.

Needless to say we took loads of pictures but I have attached only a few.

Only Wombat we saw alive, but fast asleep.

Koala awake just with Gwen

Possum

Dingo

Kookaburra

Albino Wallabies and a Joey

Kangaroos in their favourite daytime spot.

We tried to find a town on the coast called Hillarys, which we knew had a Boat Harbour but the satnav wasn’t very helpful just dropping us of by a shopping Centre which was supposed to be the Hillarys town centre. Some travelling around and we found Ocean Road and eventually the harbour, which is a marina with a little resort attached, even a small sandy beach.

The next day we drove down to Rockingham some 40 miles south of Perth and visited Penguin Island using a five minute ferry. The island is home to both a colony and a show of the Little Penguin which is the world’s smallest penguin.

The Little Penguins put on a good show, but most of them were either not hungry or tired as they just sat on the rocks.

There was a sandbar connecting the mainland to the island but there were many signs warning of the dangers, even of lives lost, some people still used it however.

We had a very nice late lunch at an Italian Restaurant on the front of Rockingham and then made our way further south to Mandurah, which like Hillarys is a Marina with a bit of a resort attached, probably used the same architect. They had added some sculptures as well.

On our last day we went first to Barrack St Quay and took a journey along the Swan River to Freemantle, getting a decent view of the CBD; to the non Aussie speakers this is the Central Business District.

The shores of the Swan River have loads of apartments, marinas and some of the most expensive properties in Australia, the house with the Orange roof being just one; over half of the other buildings in the photo are part of a single estate.

The police have a nice office by the river along with an expensive looking boat.

Gwen got to sit next to the captain and hold the wheel, but we were safe enough there was plenty of searoom.

After our return we went around the town using the City’s free bus network which went to all the central area and spent some time in the Murray Street Mall, where children were playing in the fountains.

Saying goodbye to Australia tomorrow and off to Singapore.

Barossa Valley

The drive from Adelaide was easy, and for once we had no problems with picking up the car.

We arrived in the valley down Seppeltsfield Road, past the very large Seppeltsfield Winery, it is probably the largest building in the area. Peter Seppelt was one of the German Lutherans who founded this community in the 1830’s, it used to be known as the Valley of Churches, but now it is the Valley of Wine with in excess of 100 wineries.

Our Hotel was The Louise, 15 suites in a beautiful setting near the top of a hill, with views over rows of vines, it had 1 vineyard (Scharkes) opposite and another (Heritage) next door, they had both of these wines on their list and they must be the least travelled wines in the world to an independent restaurant.

Our suite was superbly furnished with two showers, one indoor and the other outdoor, we used them both of course. They have a very upmarket and expensive restaurant – The Appelation, which we used on the last evening, it has two ‘tasting’ style menus from which you can chose 3 or 5 courses from a list of dishes, to have smallish plates but of course with a palate cleanser between courses; the 5 course selection can also come with a specially selected wine for each course.

Breakfast was served in our suite and we chose to use to have it outdoors on our little patio area.

On the first day after checking in we visited Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop, where they serve mini picnic hampers for lunch and have a large lake, for purposes unknown.

On the first two evenings we were visited by a kangaroo who stopped to eat outside the terrace about 20 yards away.

On the second day we visited three local towns Nuriootpa, Angaston and Tanundra; all lovely little places and Tanundra even has a micro brewery producing some british style ales. George had a taste of the local white and made a new friend in the Yalumba winery at Angaston.

We had driven around the Barossa for 1½ days and thought to go a little further afield, we drove along the Sturt Highway (another Australian pioneer) which connects Adelaide to Sydney. First stop was at a town called Truro which was about 200yards long, Gwen bought some olives for her friend Gloria. 

We then drove about 40 miles to the town of Blanchetown which is a horse short, it is on the Murray River and the site of a recent drinking water project, which gave us some interesting pictures of Pelicans and what looked like Cormorants.

We were told that the next town along - Waikerie had much more to see including a café, but since it was another 60 miles away we decided to give it a miss.

On the way back we visited the Wolf Blass winery, but it was very architecturally modern; stainless steel, concrete and glass trying to sell at prices higher than you could buy in the local bottleshops, so Gwen had a few tastings but I was driving.

We stopped off at the small Murray Street Winery in the town of Greenock and bought a very reasonably priced bottle of Chardonnay.

We then drove to the town of Lyndoch and had a snack at the German Café before going to the Jacobs Creek Winery at Jacobs Creek in Rowland Flat where Gwen had several more tastings and bought a very nice Pinot Grigio.

This winery is also of a modern design, but much more human and friendly, they had several exhibition pieces.

Adelaide

Our hotel was on North Terrace, right in the middle of town, an older style hotel, fine for a few days. As in many other hotels their Internet policy was terrible one of the worst we found, A$ 0.62 per minute, 2hrs A$12.50, 24hrs A$ 24, walked down to Rundle Mall good speed unlimited free Wi-Fi at David Jones, what a surprise.

Next morning went on of a tour of Adelaide, took lots of pictures of monuments, Edward 7^th and Queen Victoria to name but two.

Our tour visited Glenelg, Adelaide’s seaside resort, a bit like Weston Super Mare but smaller.

We rode the bus an extra bit when we got back so that a group could get on a River Cruise; but the traffic was awful, a Muslim Women’s group were demonstrating carrying black flags, no idea what that was all about.

Adelaide is a ‘planned city’; back in 1839, Colonel Light and his Surveyors laid the ground plans which are the same today, our guide described it as an easy city to live, I can see why, no big jams, parks all round the central city and all the facilities you could ever want. 

We rode the free circle bus and went to Ayers House, one of the explorers who built Australia and had the rock named after him. However the Australian National Trust has no idea how to organise such a treasure, we had missed a tour by a few minutes and the next one was over an hour later; of course we were not allowed to go round on our own. This place is in the Central Square Mile of Adelaide and on most of the major bus routes, very close to a major park, Our National Trust would get over 1,000 visitors a day, the Australians aren’t good at everything, just most.

After our trip to the Barossa Valley we had a few hours to spare and went back to Glenelg with it's direct tram to the city of Adelaide and its neighbour Brighton, both very nice little coastal places with history, and very close to the Airport.

 

 

We found an amazing anomaly in petrol prices, When we first hired a car in Melbourne we paid A$1.38 per litre, A$1.48 in Queensland (apparently there is always a 10 cent rise over the Christmas holiday. In Alice Springs the price was A$1.70, transporting fuel 1,500 km is probably very expensive; but around Adelaide we paid A$1.34 on the freeway, and then A$1.31 in Brighton; 2 miles away towards the airport the price was A$1.50; absolutely amazing.