WA

Am now ensconced in the Mantra Hay St, East Perth, trying to keep eyes open as we have put watches back 2 hours coming here from Cairns. Left Port Douglas earlyish and drove the Getz to Cairns to get the flight to Perth via Ayers Rock. We flew on a 717 aka DC9, which seemed suspiciously like something from the 1960s but was apparently more or less new. Lots of arid redness below during the 3 hours to Ayers Rock and 2 hours to Perth. Caught a glimpse of the rock and the Olgas from the window on descent but that's as close as we got - the stop was just long enough to refuel the aircraft and get us off and on again. Decided against buying an Uluru t-shirt as have only seen it through aircraft window and I'm not sure that counts.




Perth is warm at about 28 degrees and is apparently going to get hotter tomorrow, so the evil day of chilly reckoning will be delayed until touchdown at Heathrow. On that subject, Cairns airport was like a Platonic ideal, such was the lack of people, and the disconcerting friendliness of the security people. Yes, that's right, even the security people were friendly. I promise, it's true. Ayer's Rock airport was old-school - there was a bloke with ping pong bats, one had to walk across the Tarmac etc. I liked it.

Got a taxi from the airport to the Mantra on Hay St. and then went for a bit of a wander around central Perth. The city is small and has a Milton Keynesy feel to it, in so far as there are self-consciously large amounts of pleasant open space centrally, all the roads are nice and wide, and you have the deep suspicion that anything you see that is apparently old is in fact a pastiche built last year. This is probably very unfair. At least it doesn't have the roundabouts, so that's a blessing. The other thing it doesn't appear to have is people. It's Saturday night and there didn't seem to be anyone around at all. It's like someone's set off a neutron bomb. To be fair, we mainly walked around the CBD, which is never the most lively part of a city at the weekend, but still. Maybe they all go to Fremantle..? Which is where we have decided to go tomorrow. Laetitia on reception said we should go there tomorrow as it's the markets, and there was also something about beer which sounded good but the details of which I can't remember. We came back to the restaurant downstairs and had some pretty nice food and local wine.

Location:Adelaide Terrace,East Perth,Australia