Holiday! Part 2: Perth

After spending a few good days in Melbourne our holiday continued two time-zones further west. Perth with its 1.5 million people is the most isolated ‘big’ city in the world. For those who don’t know Australia that well, Perth is situated on the west coast. For instance, between my current home in Canberra and Perth are four days of driving through sand and bush. I believe the Beatles wrote a song about it called ‘Kangaroo Fields Forever’. We chose to fly...

Downtown Perth is rather small and peaceful (not compared to Norwegian standards, obviously), with a couple of nice pedestrian streets, hot dog stands and surf shops. We also had time to visit the infamous micro brewery in Freemantle called Little Creatures, which beer is a lovely odyssey in citrus flavored beer…eh… whatever…

The city of Perth seen from Kings Park

I've grown pretty tall down here... Tom & me, and Steve lurking in the background.

In Perth we met up with our good friend Hugh (another ‘Oslo student’). We stayed at his father’s place; a big house from 1910 in the nice suburb of Clairemont. The house has a big garden, numerous surfboards and two small, but loud dogs; Missy & Bill. Both Hugh and his dad are former local surf celebrities (right Hugh?). We even saw a picture of a young, blond Hugh posing for the newspaper revealing his dream about surfing in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. I think the only reason why Hugh never got an Olympic gold medal is that surfing never became an Olympic sport….

Our temporary residence. Francesco, Tom, me & Hugh.

Around Perth there are some superb beaches (especially in Cottesloe) and the water temperature was pretty comfortable (around 22-23 ’C). Living in Canberra, which is an inland city, makes you really enjoy having sand in your hair, the smell of salt water and even the odour of dead fish and sun dried seaweed. I'm not sure whether it was something in the water or just the feeling of freedom, but being at the beach transformed us all into wild teenagers again... and, of course, it ended with a nice cut right in between my eyes.

Some action shots from our beach days.

As the sun set in into the Indian Ocean we all became very sentimental...

In a few days I'll publish the last part of this Holiday Trilogy, Holiday! Part 3: Western Australia, so keep your eyes open!! Surfing, camping and a nice flower are some of the treats coming up...