Before you waste your time, there’s nothing from the Gold Coast parks on this trip, so no Movie Park, Dream World or Sea World. I will head back there at some point, but I’ll hold off until more of the new stuff is finished. This was less of a park trip than a “see some new places” trip, but obviously, if there are some creds to be had…
It was Chinese New Year here, so I had about 11 days off for the school holiday. I booked return flights to Melbourne at first, figuring I’d spend time there first and then go somewhere else, but my boyfriend wanted to also come to Melbourne, but could only join at the back half of my holiday, so I ended up landing in Melbourne and transferring to a domestic flight to Perth. This was all a bit of a pain in the arse since there are direct Perth flights from Hong Kong, taking the same amount of time as the Melbourne flight. However, the direct flights aren’t back to a daily route yet, so it wasn’t possible to just switch my flight anyway.
Taking into account the flight times, transfer time and the fact that I went to the airport stupidly early for a covid test since Australia decided at the last minute to require them again (from China and Hong Kong), I got to the hotel around 24 hours after leaving my place, which is a bit ridiculous considering it would’ve only been an 8-hour direct flight. No time difference between Hong Kong and Perth though, which was a bonus.
Anyway, after a needlessly long trip, I just got to the hotel and slept early.
Day 1 – Perth
The next day was spent just walking around the city centre area. The hotel was directly opposite a big arena and about a ten-minute walk to the main city centre area.
I knew nothing about the place, so it was nice to stumble upon this authentic, medieval, English street from the 1930s.
I’ll just throw in a bunch more pictures, but I was likin what I was seeing so far. I really had next to no idea about Perth, and I think I’d pictured it as much smaller and less interesting than it actually was. There were lots of old (by Australian standards) buildings along with some pretty impressive newer buildings. It was bigger than I expected, but also very compact and walkable. It was also the first time I’d been to anywhere really new in about 3 years. Yeah, I went to Energylandia last summer, but I’d been to Krakow before, but that’s about it.
I ended up at the Perth Mint. I wasn’t intending to do any “things” on that first day, just look around and decide on more stuff to potentially do later, but I’d been making good time, a tour was about to start, and the air conditioning was tempting. It was interesting enough, and has the world’s largest gold coin, so that’s some sort of box to tick I guess.
From there, I walked down to the quay area. I was taking a boat from down there the next day, so was going to take a look around then, but it was only early afternoon at this point, so went down there anyway. It was lovely and, again, not what I expected.
There’s some public/street art stuff around in various places, a lot of it connected to Aboriginal/First Nations people. I passed through some cultural district with the major museum and found that there was some fringe festival thing happening while I was there, so I booked a handful of shows to keep me occupied in the evenings: Bogan Hamlet, Briefs (who I’d seen before in Hong Kong and do a really fun show), Anita Wig’lit and Karen from Finance. I went into the museum on another morning, but I’ll shove a couple of pictures in from there now. It was impressive, a new complex built around an existing old building.
‘Twas a good day just wandering around and taking stuff in. Creds are coming, but I did some other stuff first.
Day 2 – Rottnest Island
The boat out to the island went from the quay area mentioned earlier. It’s quicker to get a train to Fremantle and join the boat there, but I decided to remove one level of faff by just walking to the quay and enjoying the boat ride. I rented a bike as part of a package with the ferry ticket. The bikes were f**king s**t though, so I wish I would’ve just rented one separately from one of a couple of places near the pier. Actually, maybe neither since there was a very regular hop on/hop off bus that followed the exact same route anyway, and after a while on the bike, the “exercise” element ceased to be fun.
Anyway, I shouldn’t really complain since it was lovely. There’s no traffic on the island, and just a handful of roads for buses, bikes etc. I tired myself out by trying to get around the island too quickly. The published estimates for the bike routes were overly generous, so I thought I would need more time than I actually did. Pictures:
I saw a quokka at the side of the road, so took a couple of pictures before it scurried back into the trees. Ok, seen one of those now; box ticked.
Then, I just continued round the island back to the starting point. The map they handed out with the bike said that this should take around 5 hours I think, but I did it in around 3, including a few short breaks. I really should’ve just taken my time with it a bit more.
Back near the main town, there were a few more quokkas around, so that was fab. I was just happy that I’d got to see one earlier, so to have a few more around was a bonus. Apparently, they come out in much bigger numbers at around dusk, and it was full-on hot afternoon at this point. They were cool though, and completely unbothered by people. Have some repetitive pictures:
I changed my ticket to get an earlier-than-planned ferry back rather than hang around too much longer. It was a gorgeous little island though, and, like I said, I wish I would’ve taken a bit more time biking around it. Once I was back in the main town/near the boat pier, I wasn’t about to head out on the bike again.
The next day was a bit “meh”, but I’ll shove it in to keep the cred anticipation going.
Day 3 – The Pinnacles
I booked some tour out into the desert, which had a 2pm pick up time, so I just went to the museum I shoved in earlier in this report in the morning. In general, I prefer to do stuff myself, but I’m becoming less and less averse to organised day tours, especially when there isn’t much of an alternative without a car.
The first stop was for some sandboarding. I hadn’t done that before, so ok, that’s done now.
On the sand dunes, we’d all left our shoes on the bus, and as we were leaving the area, I noticed two pairs of shoes across the aisle from me with no feet in them. My expert detective skills led me to deduce that the old Singaporean couple who had been there earlier had been left behind. I did think about waiting to see how long it would take for the driver/guide to realise, but then figured it could also f**k up the whole trip, so I told him. We got dropped at this very average lookout point while he drove back to find them.
Then it was to the final stop, The Pinnacles, which is loads of rocks in a desert. It’s supposed to be amazing for sunsets, but it was really cloudy, so that put the s**ts on that. We had a barbecue out there and then there was some stargazing activity, which was fine, but see also: cloudy.
I took loads more pictures of rocks since there wasn’t anything else to do, so please feel free to ask for more.
I mean, it was nice enough, and I had enough time to kill to give up a whole afternoon/evening for it (got back the hotel around 11:30pm), but it wasn’t exactly a highlight of the trip.
There’s a park coming next, but I’ve been banging this out for too long already, and I’m not even on work time, so I’ll get the next bits up tomorrow.
It was Chinese New Year here, so I had about 11 days off for the school holiday. I booked return flights to Melbourne at first, figuring I’d spend time there first and then go somewhere else, but my boyfriend wanted to also come to Melbourne, but could only join at the back half of my holiday, so I ended up landing in Melbourne and transferring to a domestic flight to Perth. This was all a bit of a pain in the arse since there are direct Perth flights from Hong Kong, taking the same amount of time as the Melbourne flight. However, the direct flights aren’t back to a daily route yet, so it wasn’t possible to just switch my flight anyway.
Taking into account the flight times, transfer time and the fact that I went to the airport stupidly early for a covid test since Australia decided at the last minute to require them again (from China and Hong Kong), I got to the hotel around 24 hours after leaving my place, which is a bit ridiculous considering it would’ve only been an 8-hour direct flight. No time difference between Hong Kong and Perth though, which was a bonus.
Anyway, after a needlessly long trip, I just got to the hotel and slept early.
Day 1 – Perth
The next day was spent just walking around the city centre area. The hotel was directly opposite a big arena and about a ten-minute walk to the main city centre area.
I knew nothing about the place, so it was nice to stumble upon this authentic, medieval, English street from the 1930s.
I’ll just throw in a bunch more pictures, but I was likin what I was seeing so far. I really had next to no idea about Perth, and I think I’d pictured it as much smaller and less interesting than it actually was. There were lots of old (by Australian standards) buildings along with some pretty impressive newer buildings. It was bigger than I expected, but also very compact and walkable. It was also the first time I’d been to anywhere really new in about 3 years. Yeah, I went to Energylandia last summer, but I’d been to Krakow before, but that’s about it.
I ended up at the Perth Mint. I wasn’t intending to do any “things” on that first day, just look around and decide on more stuff to potentially do later, but I’d been making good time, a tour was about to start, and the air conditioning was tempting. It was interesting enough, and has the world’s largest gold coin, so that’s some sort of box to tick I guess.
From there, I walked down to the quay area. I was taking a boat from down there the next day, so was going to take a look around then, but it was only early afternoon at this point, so went down there anyway. It was lovely and, again, not what I expected.
There’s some public/street art stuff around in various places, a lot of it connected to Aboriginal/First Nations people. I passed through some cultural district with the major museum and found that there was some fringe festival thing happening while I was there, so I booked a handful of shows to keep me occupied in the evenings: Bogan Hamlet, Briefs (who I’d seen before in Hong Kong and do a really fun show), Anita Wig’lit and Karen from Finance. I went into the museum on another morning, but I’ll shove a couple of pictures in from there now. It was impressive, a new complex built around an existing old building.
‘Twas a good day just wandering around and taking stuff in. Creds are coming, but I did some other stuff first.
Day 2 – Rottnest Island
The boat out to the island went from the quay area mentioned earlier. It’s quicker to get a train to Fremantle and join the boat there, but I decided to remove one level of faff by just walking to the quay and enjoying the boat ride. I rented a bike as part of a package with the ferry ticket. The bikes were f**king s**t though, so I wish I would’ve just rented one separately from one of a couple of places near the pier. Actually, maybe neither since there was a very regular hop on/hop off bus that followed the exact same route anyway, and after a while on the bike, the “exercise” element ceased to be fun.
Anyway, I shouldn’t really complain since it was lovely. There’s no traffic on the island, and just a handful of roads for buses, bikes etc. I tired myself out by trying to get around the island too quickly. The published estimates for the bike routes were overly generous, so I thought I would need more time than I actually did. Pictures:
I saw a quokka at the side of the road, so took a couple of pictures before it scurried back into the trees. Ok, seen one of those now; box ticked.
Then, I just continued round the island back to the starting point. The map they handed out with the bike said that this should take around 5 hours I think, but I did it in around 3, including a few short breaks. I really should’ve just taken my time with it a bit more.
Back near the main town, there were a few more quokkas around, so that was fab. I was just happy that I’d got to see one earlier, so to have a few more around was a bonus. Apparently, they come out in much bigger numbers at around dusk, and it was full-on hot afternoon at this point. They were cool though, and completely unbothered by people. Have some repetitive pictures:
I changed my ticket to get an earlier-than-planned ferry back rather than hang around too much longer. It was a gorgeous little island though, and, like I said, I wish I would’ve taken a bit more time biking around it. Once I was back in the main town/near the boat pier, I wasn’t about to head out on the bike again.
The next day was a bit “meh”, but I’ll shove it in to keep the cred anticipation going.
Day 3 – The Pinnacles
I booked some tour out into the desert, which had a 2pm pick up time, so I just went to the museum I shoved in earlier in this report in the morning. In general, I prefer to do stuff myself, but I’m becoming less and less averse to organised day tours, especially when there isn’t much of an alternative without a car.
The first stop was for some sandboarding. I hadn’t done that before, so ok, that’s done now.
On the sand dunes, we’d all left our shoes on the bus, and as we were leaving the area, I noticed two pairs of shoes across the aisle from me with no feet in them. My expert detective skills led me to deduce that the old Singaporean couple who had been there earlier had been left behind. I did think about waiting to see how long it would take for the driver/guide to realise, but then figured it could also f**k up the whole trip, so I told him. We got dropped at this very average lookout point while he drove back to find them.
Then it was to the final stop, The Pinnacles, which is loads of rocks in a desert. It’s supposed to be amazing for sunsets, but it was really cloudy, so that put the s**ts on that. We had a barbecue out there and then there was some stargazing activity, which was fine, but see also: cloudy.
I took loads more pictures of rocks since there wasn’t anything else to do, so please feel free to ask for more.
I mean, it was nice enough, and I had enough time to kill to give up a whole afternoon/evening for it (got back the hotel around 11:30pm), but it wasn’t exactly a highlight of the trip.
There’s a park coming next, but I’ve been banging this out for too long already, and I’m not even on work time, so I’ll get the next bits up tomorrow.
)
