I am currently in the middle of a 12 day adventure in Perth, Western Australia. Apart from the weather being a bit changeable since it’s early in winter, it’s been pretty nice.
I had forgotten some of the more annoying things about Australia – absolutely nothing is open on Sunday and we had to spend about 2 hours driving around to find the one smegging supermarket that was open. It’s also damn near impossible here to buy a cell phone that isn’t locked to a network. In NZ there is only one GSM network, so no point in locking handsets. Here I had to ask at about 4 stores before I got a staff member who could tell me how to unlock a handset – and at one of the previous ones the woman who served me told me that there was a guy called Bill who lived down on the beach who’d unlock handsets on the cheap! Very professional.
Monday was shopping at Rockingham and then a coffee down on the waterfront looking over the ocean. Shopping here is fun, Australian women’s clothing and shoes tend to run to bigger sizes than those found in the stores I shop at in NZ making it a lot easier to find stuff that fits. Unfortunately still no easier to find stuff I actually like.
Tuesday we went to Freemantle, where we visited a car museum and a maritime museum – the latter offering a tour of a decommissioned Oberon class submarine. The submarine tour was excellent. The people who volunteer to be submariners must have nerves of steel – the idea of being under water in a big pipe under enormous pressure gives me chills.
Wednesday we just chilled down at the beach in the sun, and got attacked by a pair of ducks.
The weather has been a bit too cold since then for beach fun, so we’ve been doing more indoorsy things. Perth is kinda nice, but I’m really homesick for Wellington… and normal sized currency. Photos to follow.
