After so long away from cities, Melbourne came as a bit of a shock. We had rented an apartment in the middle of Melbourne, but getting into it and into the car park was quite stressful. The car park required going down a small alley and into a lift which took the car into a basement car park below the apartment block, which had to be accessed from the other side of the block. A further complication was that you had to get the key before you could access either the car park or apartment, and for this you had to go to a busy street corning in the shopping district to retrieve a lock box from a bike rack. This in turn meant you needed to find somewhere to park the car whilst getting to and getting the key – which was far from easy. Even then, the complication had not ended as the street from which you accessed the alleyway to the car park lift was a one way street, but half of it was closed due to roadworks and so you had to access by going the wrong way up the one way street from the other end. By the time we had eventually got the car away and got to the apartment, we were ready for a rest!
We went for a walk along by the river and into the botanical gardens, walking close to both the Australian Open complex and the Melbourne Cricket Ground, before heading back into the city, near our apartment, for dinner. Looking online, it appeared that there were tours of the Australian Open complex daily, and so the follow day we headed back to do a tour, only to find that there were no tours scheduled that day. We were able to look at some of the outside courts, but given that we were heading off to Perth the following morning, we were not going to be able to do a tour and so decided to go and do a tour of the MCG – which was set up ready for the start of the Australian football season starting that weekend. We then went up a high rise building to look over Melbourne, from where we could see the setting up of the GP circuit in Albert Park for the grand prix at the end of March, and so decided to take a walk to the circuit and walked along a little bit of it. A day for looking at sporting venues – and a lot of walking!
We got to the airport for our flight to Perth with plenty of time – the traffic from Melbourne to the airport was not as bad as we had expected, and there were no issued with dropping the car off. The fact that it took 4 hours to fly from Melbourne to Perth, where there was a two hour time difference compared to Melbourne, emphasizes how big Australia is.
We had no particular plans for Perth, although had booked a trip to the Pinnacles for our final full day. Soon after we arrived, we walked along the Swan river from hotel to the jetty near downtown to see what trips were available, and saw that the main trip was to Rottnest – an island just off the coast (which itself was an hour by boat to Fremantle). We booked the trip for the Sunday, leaving us two full days to explore Perth.
In the end, we spent one day in Perth – visiting the Perth mint where we saw a gold pouring demonstration and had the chance to pick up a gold ingot (which was carefully secured behind glass and in a very strong cage!). On the Saturday, we caught the train from Perth to Fremantle where we wanted to visit Fremantle Prison, a prison built by convicts in the 19th century. We managed to book not only on a tour of the prison, but also on a tunnels tour. There was water under the prison, and so the convicts had been used to dig a series of tunnels under the prison – and indeed beyond the walls of the prison – so that the water could be collected and provided (sold) to the town. The tunnels were not used for escapes, even though they had been dug by prisoners and went outside the prison. There were only four of us on the tour – which required the donning of safety harnesses with fall arresters and hard hats so that we could be attached to the ladders that we had to climb down to get to the tunnels deep below the ground. There were three levels of ladders, each with a slotted vertical strip that the fall arresters ran along and metal rungs to either side. These were quite difficult to hold onto as our hands were quite sweaty. That, together with needing to wear wellington boots as it was wet in the tunnels, made the climb down quite nervy. Nevertheless, we made it, and spent the next hour or so exploring the tunnels both on foot and then on small boats that we had to paddle or push along off the walls as we floated on the water in the tunnels. An unforgettable experience.
The final full way in Australia was spent in the Pinnacles – or to be more accurate on the way to, at and on the way back from the Pinnacles. The Pinnacles is about a 2 hour drive north of Perth, and so we were picked up in a coach and started the drive north. On the way, we stopped at some huge sand dunes in Lancelin, where we had a go at sand boarding. The first, and most difficult bit, was climbing to the top of the sand dunes – no easy matter especially as the wind was very strong by the top. Then, the boards were coated with candlewax to make them as slippery as possible, before you get onto the board and get a push before sliding down – much like sledging on snow (but much warmer). We both had a go (I had a few goes) – each time falling off at the bottom – sometimes in a more spectacular way than others. We then moved on for a paddle in the ocean to try and get some of the sand off (although adding water probably just made it more like concrete), before heading to the Pinnacles themselves. The Pinnacles are found in the desert, and are a lot of odd stacks sticking up from the sand. It does not appear that anyone really knows how these stacks were formed – although I suspect that the suggestion that it was aliens is probably not correct – but they were certainly impressive. They looked even more impressive when we were driving out after dark and they were just illuminated with the lights of the bus. In the meantime, we had all had a BBQ in the desert, and spent the evening watching the stars come out – being so dark it was easy to see loads of stars, and even bits of the milky way.
Just to complete the gardens, we spent our final morning in Perth at the Perth botanical gardens, before having a quick swim in the very cold hotel pool, before making our way to the airport for the very long flight home.
