After being dropped in the centre of Fremantle (or ‘Freo’ – Perth’s historic port town), we hunted down the nearest backpackers establishment to serve as a base for our research into covering the 3000km separating us and our final destination (for a while anyway) of Sydney. The ‘Sundancer Backpacker Resort’ was certainly not a resort and while the old building did have lots of character, the uniquely pungent backpacker aroma (kind of like the smell of Reading Festival but worse) seemed omnipresent and sleep definitely didn’t feature on this place’s list of selling points – the rowdy bar downstairs went on until the early hours and the hostel’s numerous ‘residents’ got up for work at about 7am meaning you were lucky to grab a couple of hours of shuteye at night! The only redeeming feature was fast Internet; essential for the urgent travel admin we had to attend to!
Crazy decor and musty vibe in Sundancer Backpackers!
Perth is the capital of Western Australia and lies on the South-Western corner of the country, a few miles inland from Fremantle on the coast. In order to make your way from Perth to Sydney, you need to cross the vast Nullabor Desert (so called because there are no trees (‘null arbor’ in Latin)). One of Australia’s few train lines runs across the Nullabor, however as this is a tourist route the price is pretty steep - £350 for a seat for 3 days on a train or £600 each for a cabin! We’d been looking into doing a camper van relocation from Perth to Adelaide, Melbourne or Sydney for the last month or so but unfortunately at this time of year they are few and far between and renting one would cost £700 plus fuel! The next option was Gumtree searching for a liftshare; we only found one going East which looked promising but sadly the girl didn’t really know whether she wanted to go or not – darn!
A soggy day in Fremantle – nice church though!
The last option before resorting to flying was to buy an old banger for a comedy roadtrip across the desert. We headed into Perth on our second day and headed for the car dealer part of town to start our ‘jalopy’ (Australian for old banger!) search. Bypassing the five-figure prices of all of the main dealers, we made a bee-line for the equivalent of Roy’s Car Lot out of Eastenders and hunted around for the smallest price we could see! Having looked at the whole collection of weather-worn autos, we were shocked to find you couldn’t get anything in Oz with rego (MOT) for under $1999 (about £1200), even for a knackered old Hyundai Excel! Having picked up a legendary Eighties Mazda at the Reading Auctions a few years back for just over £100, we were reluctant to fork out over ten times that for something that could well leave us stranded in the middle of the desert! Coupled with the fact that to make it to Sydney in time for our hotel booking would mean driving 15 hours per day for three days, we made the tough decision to fly the last leg of our travels. When we got back to the ranch, we booked our Virgin Blue flight to Sydney for a few days later and set to work exploring the city, excited and happy in the knowledge that we were to be travelling at about 10 times the speed we had become accustomed to over the last few months!
Ropey old Hyundai for £1700 anyone?!
Anyway, exploration-wise, when we first arrived in Fremantle it looked pretty bleak – it was cloudy, raining and the area of town we walked around had a distinctly dejected (and a little backward) feel! Once the sun came out a few days later it transformed, with grand trading buildings dating from the 1800’s and an impressive train station giving hints of Fremantle’s colourful past as a thriving port town. It was Perth however that made the biggest impression on us in our brief Western Australian pit stop – relocating from the shady backpacker establishment to a nice B&B in Perth was the start of a cracking few days in Western Australia’s capital. Fran was a big fan of Perth so I’ll hand the blog baton to her now…!
Grand old facades (and nice blue sky) in the historic quarter of Fremantle
One of ‘our’ MSC containers continuing its journey by train into Australia!
Fran writes: Although Perth didn’t initially give us the wow factor that we’d experienced arriving in many of the other cities on our travels (principally because it was westernised and familiar) it had a lot of charm and really grew on us the more we explored. The city itself was lovely; quite modern with spotless streets, landscaped grass verges, picturesque parks with a vibrant, cosmopolitan centre. Everything we had craved in the less salubrious locations on our travels! The shopping area was the only let down – it was a bit 80s and had a Maidenhead or Bletchley vibe! Our first priority on finding ourselves amongst chic and fashionable Australians was to shrug off our traveller image. That said, we hadn’t fully embraced the traveller stereotype of growing dreadlocks and wearing tie-dyed pantaloons during our travels but in the 5 months we’d been going neither of us had had a decent hair cut (Rich tried, unsuccessfully, to have one in Nha Trang – the “hair dresser” chopped at his locks like she was trimming a hedge and Rich found bits of his hair falling out randomly for the following few days!). To my delight we found a Toni & Guys and we both splashed out on a good cut. Unsurprisingly, our hairdresser had emigrated to Australia 3 years previously (it felt like the only people we had met since we got off the boat were British expats including some ten pound poms!). Helpfully, he gave us lots of sights seeing tips and told us that we must visit Kings Parks; which we obediently did that evening. Kings Park is Perth’s equivalent of the Botanical Gardens in Sydney and is perched on top of a hill overlooking the city and harbour. The view was mesmerising. The skyscrapers were all lit up and the glistening lights reflected in the harbour water. A footpath and look out points guided you around the perimeter of the park and the view changed from the glowing city lights to the dimmer suburban landscapes. We visited the park again in the daylight the following day and the view was just as magnificent.
Well manicured grassy and tree lined verges – sorry Milton Keynes you just don’t compete!
Enjoying the view with our new hair dos (hidden under my hat because it was freezing!)
The city at night
And by day
Looking out across the harbour
As we were still trying to train for the marathon we decided to tackle our longest training runs while in Perth. The Australians are seriously into their fitness and we had seen so many runners while sightseeing that we were really feeling like we had to get out there and join them. That said, I wasn’t going to participate in the locals favourite exercise of running up and down the steps leading to Kings Park. The incredibly steep steps were known as Jacob’s Ladder and weaved their way up the hill. We watched some very fit people speeding up the steps, turning round and running down only to take a second or two to catch their breath before pelting up again! It was all I could do to walk up the steps in one go without stopping they were that steep! We, sensibly, choose a nice flat route to run. We ran inland along the Swan River and the scenery was so lovely we didn’t really notice the aches and pains in our legs – that set in after the 10 mile run (20 for Rich!) when I was walking like Jake the Peg! There was a well maintained footpath the whole route and we ran past lots of locals enjoying an “Ozzie BBQ” on a public use BBQ alongside the river. We enviously ran past people enjoying a bevvy or two in chic looking waterside bars and through some pretty expensive looking housing estates. The weather was perfect – cool temperatures but bright sunshine and a gentle onshore breeze. It was probably the best run I’d had in a long time.
Exercise lovers/loonies on Jacob’s Ladder
Our running route – not the worst view AND gloriously flat!
Gruelling exercise out of the way, we had a bit of time to soak up the vibe in Perth before boarding our flight to Sydney. Perth had a cool mixture of traditional European-style brick architecture and modern glazed iconic buildings. Both looked equally spectacular in the bright winter sunshine. There were also some pretty stylish designer pads on the road leading to Kings Park - fittingly this particular street was called Miami Road!
Miami street apartment
Cool front door
Traditional looking corner bar
New and uber-modern bell tower
We were really excited when we arrived at Perth airport to board our domestic flight to Sydney. It was bizarre to actually be covering 1000s of miles in only a couple of hours as opposed to a couple of days! The flight was really smooth – thanks Virgin Blue - and we arrived in Sydney ready to settle down for a few months and return to a normal routine. Sadly, that meant returning to work – boo hoo! Actually, if we were honest, we were really looking forward to earning some money and feeling justified in spending it – especially on good cold Australian wine!
Our child-like excitement to finally be flying!
“Goodbye Perth”
Rich will write our final travelling blog post on Sydney as soon as possible. But for now, miss you all heaps and wish you were here to enjoy some of that Australian wine with us! Love Fran x
