1st Weekend in Perth

Sat 6 Jan 2007 40 °C

I arrived in Perth at 10pm on Friday night with Rowena. She was being collected by friends from the airport and they gave us a whistle stop tour of Perth by night before dropping me at a hostel. We stopped quickly at Kings Park which overlooks the city and the Swan River, drove through Northbridge, the lively area of Perth and the city itself, which was really quiet, the city of Perth is mainly industrial.

Woke early Saturday and went for breakfast on Cottesloe Beach. The beaches around Perth are fantastic, had a paddle in the sea and went on to Fremantle (Freo as the locals call it). Wandered around Freo and came across a canon which is still fired at 1pm everyday. It drew a small crowd and the lady preparing the canon asked if I would like to fire it. So after asking everyone else to step back, the lady introduced me to the crowd, we did a countdown from 10 and I pushed the button!

The canon was used years ago by the sailors to check the acuracy of their navigational equipment. That doesn't happen anymore, although they've continued with the canon.

Went to pub in Freo called Little Creatures, it's also a brewery. So sampled a few of the home brews...very nice. Sat outside on the edge of the sea and watched the fisherman sail in and out.

That evening we went to a local pub called the Paddington to watch a live band play.

Sunday morning I was up at 5am to make the 45 minute drive down to Rockingham where we went fishing. I thought it would be a big boat, but no. It was tiny and still on a trailer on the back of a ute. We drove the boat on to the beach and then waded through the shallow waters to get on the boat.

I caught 2 whiting which I was pretty pleased about. We also pulled in a few rock cod and skippy. Others that we threw back because we couldn't eat were scorpion fish, rainbow fish and something that looked like nemo. There's quite a lot of skill involved in this fishing lark - more so than I'd appreciated before. The swell was up and even with 2 sickness tablets I still felt queezy. That night we went for dinner at Scarborough beach and had an early night.

View of Perth from Kings Park