Coming to Australia has felt more than a little bit odd. This is the furthest we’ve ever been from home, yet it’s more similar to the UK than anywhere we’ve ever been! Which has lead to a bit of inverse culture shock – it took us a few days of wandering around to get used to talking to people in the native the language (erm, English)! Gary came up with the cracker almost a week after we arrived: he looked at the menu of an Italian restaurant and then turned to me in a confused way and asked ‘It’s interesting that the menu is in English. Oh, they speak English in Australia don’t they? Scratch that, scratch that!’
I suppose in some ways this is similar to when we visited the UK for Amit’s wedding a few months back. After spending so long in Asia, familiar old London still felt familiar, but somehow less comfortable to be in than say Hong Kong or Shanghai. And when we rocked up at Heathrow’s immigration, I had an odd but overwhelming urge to say ‘Sawat di kah’ to the official – ‘Hello’ in Thai! Overall, this unfamiliarly a very odd sensation, but only lasted a few days. By which time of course we were flying back to Thailand – which then in turn felt weird…
Anyway, other than our problems with the native language, we’ve done a fair amount of our usual wanderings in the Perth area. We’re only on the west coast for a very brief time before flying over to Brisbane, so we haven’t been able to travel extensively. Distances are so large over here that moving from place to place is a major undertaking, costing a lot in both time and money. So we weren’t able to make it up to the Nigaloo reef as we’d hoped, but after hearing yesterday that a sizable section of it has recently been destroyed perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing.
Perth itself is a nice place. In fact it’s booming at the moment – which has made finding a hotel a bit of a trauma. Gary thinks it’s a lot like Bedford, which I think is unfair on Perth, but he insists is a compliment as he thinks of Bedford in a nice way! But, unlike Bedford, the best bits of Perth are parkland – the stretches along the river (including some nice islands) and the lovely King’s Park area with its water gardens, fountains, botanical gardens, and woodland tree-top walkways. The town centre itself is nice enough too, but it’s scarily similar to modern towns in the UK. If you were plonked down in the pedestrianised shopping centre of Perth and told it was in Essex (or Bedfordshire!) you wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Especially at the moment as the weather has been frankly freezing. We thought it was meant to be hot in Oz!
Near to Perth is the small town of Fremantle, where we also spent a few nights. This is a costal place, with a pretty (but pretty freezing) seafront and harbour, complete with oodles of Fish‘n’Chip restaurants, and some classy pubs. The best was called ‘Little Creatures’, and had huge vats of fermenting beer in an unpretentious converted aircraft hanger (I know it sounds odd, but it worked). It actually served great wood fired pizzas too, and had a lovely little beer garden overlooking the harbour. All very nice, but it reminded us a bit of Portsmouth!
Ah well, we’ll be heading over to Brisbane soon, and then travelling down the coast towards Sydney. I think we’re going to have to start renting vehicles to make the most of Australia though It is substantially more difficult to get around here than most of the parts of Asia we’ve visited - unless you wish to hop on a dreaded coach tour that is…
I suppose in some ways this is similar to when we visited the UK for Amit’s wedding a few months back. After spending so long in Asia, familiar old London still felt familiar, but somehow less comfortable to be in than say Hong Kong or Shanghai. And when we rocked up at Heathrow’s immigration, I had an odd but overwhelming urge to say ‘Sawat di kah’ to the official – ‘Hello’ in Thai! Overall, this unfamiliarly a very odd sensation, but only lasted a few days. By which time of course we were flying back to Thailand – which then in turn felt weird…
Anyway, other than our problems with the native language, we’ve done a fair amount of our usual wanderings in the Perth area. We’re only on the west coast for a very brief time before flying over to Brisbane, so we haven’t been able to travel extensively. Distances are so large over here that moving from place to place is a major undertaking, costing a lot in both time and money. So we weren’t able to make it up to the Nigaloo reef as we’d hoped, but after hearing yesterday that a sizable section of it has recently been destroyed perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing.
Perth itself is a nice place. In fact it’s booming at the moment – which has made finding a hotel a bit of a trauma. Gary thinks it’s a lot like Bedford, which I think is unfair on Perth, but he insists is a compliment as he thinks of Bedford in a nice way! But, unlike Bedford, the best bits of Perth are parkland – the stretches along the river (including some nice islands) and the lovely King’s Park area with its water gardens, fountains, botanical gardens, and woodland tree-top walkways. The town centre itself is nice enough too, but it’s scarily similar to modern towns in the UK. If you were plonked down in the pedestrianised shopping centre of Perth and told it was in Essex (or Bedfordshire!) you wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Especially at the moment as the weather has been frankly freezing. We thought it was meant to be hot in Oz!
Near to Perth is the small town of Fremantle, where we also spent a few nights. This is a costal place, with a pretty (but pretty freezing) seafront and harbour, complete with oodles of Fish‘n’Chip restaurants, and some classy pubs. The best was called ‘Little Creatures’, and had huge vats of fermenting beer in an unpretentious converted aircraft hanger (I know it sounds odd, but it worked). It actually served great wood fired pizzas too, and had a lovely little beer garden overlooking the harbour. All very nice, but it reminded us a bit of Portsmouth!
Ah well, we’ll be heading over to Brisbane soon, and then travelling down the coast towards Sydney. I think we’re going to have to start renting vehicles to make the most of Australia though It is substantially more difficult to get around here than most of the parts of Asia we’ve visited - unless you wish to hop on a dreaded coach tour that is…
