Perth: First Days

The old man on the other side of the aisle struggled to open the overhead bin. He let me try to help him. "I have to admire your capacity for consuming protein," he says, alluding I assume to the fact that I not only consumed every morsel of my own delicious full Monty English breakfast but also most of Claudia's salmon, whereas I was just as aware that he'd pushed the starter around and then given up. I put the protein to use by wrestling the bin open for him, and lifted down his similarly lightweight bag. I could not have known it at the time, but outstanding fare, even the "free" airline offerings, was to become a common thread that ran through the whole Return to Oz. We had booked one special dinner under the stars in the desert surrounding Uluru, but everything else was a surprise around every corner, from my beloved long black (coffee) and meat pie lunches on the road, to the exquisite dragon fruit left in our breakfast hamper in Queensland, to the most extraordinary breakfast ever—based on a casual recommendation by the hotel manager as we prepared to set out on our last day's walk in Perth. But all that was to come. It was 2am local, 12 hours in front of home, we were newly arrived on the continent, and heading into town in a cab, very much looking forward to not moving any more.

The driver was chatty and wanted to take the "scenic" route into town—"same price but it will give you the lie of the land". He learned of our own driving plans, so he gave us detailed intructions on how to hit a kangaroo (don't try to avoid it, but let your foot off the brake at the last minute, thereby lifting the hood to catch it higher, lessening the chances of it coming through the windshield). CMT lets on that we are All Blacks (New Zealand) rugby supporters. "Rite-oh, well we won't hold that against you." He paused. "Actually they are not doing all that well at the moment, focussed too much on their cricket ..." another pause while we grok the ramifications of their arch rivals having too great a focus on a subject then he continued "... we need to figure out how to fix that".

We finally pulled up at the hotel and by 3am were tucked up in our wonderfully stationary bed. At a friend's strong recommendation, and to Claudia's great reluctance, (not Federally regulated), we took Melatonin before going to sleep to help with the jet lag. We were so worried about the lag that we'd arranged for the first day on the ground to be completely free, so Claudia could sleep as long as she wanted. Tired or not, I knew I would not be able to sit around for a whole day, so I had planned an itinerary for myself just down the road from Perth in Fremantle where there was a didgeridoo shop (lifetime wishlist) and by happy chance, a brewery. I slept longer than I expected, but the much bigger surprise was that Claudia bounced out of bed around the same time, and was ready and willing to join me on my little adventure.

As we set out from the hotel, the center of Perth had a (very) early Sunday morning sort of feel to it. The first people we met on the street were rough, homeless looking, and one set of girls meandering towards us would have had Claudia reaching for her pepper spray if she'd had any. One had horizontal teeth, and another had a more temporary but equally unattrative disfigurement, a huge and obviously fresh and raw black eye. But it was a third who was whining "... but it wasn't my fault ..." as we thankfully cruised by them without incident. However it was not Sunday, and it was not dawn. It was midday on Monday. Admittedly it was Easter Monday, but to find the center of the largest most isolated city on earth a ghost town was still a bit eerie. Somehow it made sense of the fact that the two or three people we'd asked for advice, plus all the reading I'd done on the internet, all made recommendations for locations in Fremantle, not Perth. The train was a local light rail stop everywhere thing, but we were in no hurry, and in any case, it was only about a 25 minute ride.

Fremantle

Walking away from the station in Fremantle, the scene could not have been more different. The stream of people who got off the train all headed straight across the road to Market Street, which looked like Main Street in Disneyland—just a sea of people. Within 100 yards we came to the first item on my personal itinerary: the didgeridoo shop. It was a huge relief to find it open, since this was a top priority, and there was no time to return. We remarked on the crowds to Nic the salesman. "It's the world-famous Fremantle International Arts Festival! Aren't you here for that?" Err, no we are actually here to find THIS store." Having confirmed it was open, and would be for the rest of the afternoon, I told Nic we would be back. Claudia: "but first he has to feed his wife." "Rite-oh!" Nic understood. The streets we wandered to Cicerellos were just as packed as Market St/Disneyland, but with all the people sporting beers, they now took on more of a Bourbon Street flavor.

A guy that sounded remarkably like Nick Drake was playing on one of the little stages that had been set up at several of the street intersections, but it turned out that it WAS Nick Drake, playing over the sound system and the 30 or 40 people sat in the street were watching an empty stage.

Not so the busker at the next stage, whom Claudia liked sufficiently to stop and watch for several numbers. Puppeteers and other street artists provided all sorts of entertainment for folks of all ages, and the food stalls provided sights, smells, and presumably delicious fare for all tastes. Except ours: destination Cicerella's, since multiple people had recommended it, including didgeridoo Nic.

Cicerellos's was a huge fish restaurant right on the harbor. You choose your food, go find a table, and a buzzer goes off when you can return to the counter for your tray. We sat outside right by the water. An old fishing trawler was permanently moored beside us, with the deck covered in tables and chairs so it was part of the seating area. Between the trawler and the jetty two or three guys were tipping fishfood into the water. I went over to investigate, and the water was boiling with fish. "What are you feeding?" "Fish." Very droll. "Any idea what KIND of fish?" "Bream and blow fish." Thank you. Now that they said it, I could see that there were clearly (at least) two types of fish, the steel blue bream, and the smaller, rounder, blow fish. Later I went back to watch a couple of kids doing more feeding, only to discover that the answer I'd been given the first time was perhaps not quite so droll. A cormorant was darting around on the bottom cleaning up what the kids had scattered. After a delicious (but rather too cool) lunch of Rankin cod and fried squid in red chilli sauce, it was time to return to DigeridooBreathe. On the way we stopped for a coffee. When Claudia asked for cream, they had to fetch it from a refrigerator at the back of the store. Seriously? "Only Americans ask for it." "We need our calories" I murmored.

Nic was still there. Or at least at first Claudia assumed he was Nic, but it turned out to be a clone—both guys absolutely looked the part. Benny showed me around the store, and started to help me figure out what to look for. The absolutely genuine original article was from Arnhemland on the northern coast. Didgeridoos had been made there for hundreds, probably thousands of years, whereas they were mostly introduced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in other regions. The downside is that they are not the best sonically. Another style was made of an extremely hard eucalypt, sounded pretty good, and were great value, but had a big live edge bulb on the bottom, which I was not fond of. The middle ground stylistically had a huge variation in price.

Two German chiclets walked in, who even Claudia later described as "adorably cute". They wanted to know if Benny could teach them how to play, which of course he was only too happy to try, and Claudia and I were only too happy to listen. Their lesson probably went on for the best part of half an hour, during which time Nic returned and joined in the fun. He explained that the major difference in price of the middle ground instruments had nothing to do with the art or the artist (many were by the same man) but everything to do with the quality of the tone. Nic and Benny tag teamed flirting with the chiclets, and playing and contrasting samples for me. Finally the girl's chaparone arrived and took them away, and we got down to business. Even though I may never be able to play, and the purchase was more about realizing a boyhood dream than changing my career, it was important to me that it was a quality instrument as well as a piece of art, and we ended up spending somewhat more than we had budgeted—especially as this was Day 1 of the trip. But what a beauty.

The afternoon was on the wane, but there was still daylight, and Claudia still had gas in the tank, so we could still achieve my secondary target for Fremantle: Little Creatures brewery. We sat outside in their small beer garden in the shade of an olive grove and I had an excellent pale ale. A good omen. When Wayne and I were in Oz in 2005 the beer was probably our biggest disappointment, with Tooley's Black the only beer we could find with any flavor at all. It's a good fall back, but no substitute for a good IPA, or just PA in this case. We won't hold that against them.

I bought a few more for my night cap(s) then it was time to stroll back to the train and an early night. Tomorrow was a crack of dawn start.

Rottnest Island

Day 1 was a freebie. The Return to Oz Grand Tour officially started on Day 2 with our 8:30a ferry tickets to Rottnest Island. The hotel was a pleasant 15 minute walk from the pier, on a beautiful, if a little cool, morning. Contrary to expectations, Perth is not actually on the coast—Fremantle is its port, so the first 45 minutes of the ferry ride was a leisurely cruise down the speed-restricted Swan River. The crew even provided a running commentary, from which we learned that the huge park we could clearly see on the west bank of the river as we left town was Kings Park, "larger than Central Park in NYC." We immediately recognised its potential as another target on our free day at the other end of the trip, which had been planned as a buffer with no definitive itinary. We drifted past Western Australia University, whose most famous graduate is apparently Bob Hawke (an ex Prime Minister). "Those of you who know of him will not be surprised to learn that he's the long time record holder for chugging a yard of ale." Then there was a freighter that looked like a cross between a container ship and a cruise liner, because it was about eight floors of live sheep apparently bound for Kuwait. It looked spookily like a cruise ship, but one badly in need of a paint job and a bath. Named after Captain Fremantle, and settled in 1829, Fremantle lives up to his name as it was the first free colony to be established in Australia, but the narrator was quick to add that the aboriginals had been here for 40,000 years before that. We finally passed through the breakwater and headed out to the open sea, and "Rotto." It was a lovely calm day and the passage was smooth and event free, the only excitement being a pod of dolphins cavorting in our wake, but far too far back to be making any use of it. Popular with the locals for its traffic-free serenity, its main attraction for most visitors, including us, was its wild population of quokkas, a marsupial about the size of a rabbit. Although apparently abundant on "Rotto", they are extremely rare everywhere else, so if one was ever going to see one, this was absolutely the place to do so. More generally, since we have a rule for ourselves that we are not allowed to check off any species unless we have tracked them down in the wild, it seemed a good idea to check off this easy target so we'd have at least one marsupial on our list. Despite being assured that it was unlikely that we would not find any, I was paranoid enough about it that I'd noted a free late afternoon walking tour that "guaranteed" we would see them. If all else failed by then, we'd make our way back to town in time to join the tour. I was not the only one with this fear. We were not 50 yards from the ferry when a kid shouted to his parents that he's spotted one, and within 15 seconds there were so many people flocked around it that we couldn't see a thing. We refused to join the crush. If it was this easy to spot the first, it couldn't possibly be an issue to find some more. Famous last words. We pushed our rental bikes up to the main road and set off on a lap around about half the island. It had really warmed up by then, and we soon had to stop to peel off several layers.

We rode passed pink lakes, sandy dunes, stunted pine groves. Waterbirds and quokkas were everywhere.

A microscopic algae called Dunalielia salina is common in the open water of the lakes. It grows on salt crystals. The algae contains beta-carotene, which is partially responsible for the pink color of the smaller lakes and for the red appearance of the shrimp that feed on this algae. The particular pink lake where we stopped to read this information was four times saltier than seawater. Remembering that Dunaliella salina grows on salt crystals, it is therefore the high concentration of salt in this lake which makes it remarkably more pink than the surrounding lakes. The foam that accumulates on the shore in windy weather is also thought to come from the algae, as it dies and breaks down to form organic materials. The materials interact with the water to alter its surface tension and acts as a natural foaming agent or detergent, promoting the formation of bubbles.

After four or five miles we came to a small village with a mini market, and we stopped to buy some supplies for lunch. Claudia asked the checkout clerk if he knew of a nice spot we could stop for our picnic "perhaps somewhere with fewer flies?" He looked a little take aback at the question then said: "Not without leaving Australia". We loaded up the bikes and then rode a little way until we found a small shelter overlooking a bay. The shelter provided some shade from the sun, and the breeze provided too much of a challenge for at least some of the flies. Tomatoes, local cheese, and some remarkably chewy gluten-free bread for lunch. Delicious.

Rottnest has two resident raptors, the osprey and the nankeen kestrel. Ospreys (yoorndoordoo) are frequently seen on the coast (hence our spotting one), with at least 14 known nest sites around the island, hence our spotting one of those too, close to which was another convenient sign, bearing this info.

What an excellent way to start: great weather, fresh air, plenty of wildlife, no traffic, enough exercise for me without being too much for CMT. Result. The only downside: somewhere, somehow, I lost my precious Tilly hat. I think I must have left it on the quayside when we grabbed everything to jump on the ferry. And here began the hat loss/gain adventures. Back in town, we walked the snaking pedestrian bridge back through the park to the hotel, then a quiet night in watching a Netflix movie and consuming the remains of our picnic for supper. Against my better judgement, Claudia made me take a beer out of the minibar instead of going down to the lobby. At least it was a real beer.