Perth

Perth has to be added to the list of places to visit on my next trip to Australia, there's no way I can really say that I've been there having spent less than 24 hours in the city! We arrived in at 7pm ending our 10 day tour from Broome. We met Richard of OzBUS fame at the train station at Wellington and William and headed off to his place where he was kindly putting us up for the night. A local chinese restaurant fed us a lovely dinner for a very reasonable price before we headed off in search of The Shed on Aberdeen Street to meet up with the Western Exposure (ATA) gang to say the farewells before everyone headed off their separate ways.

It should be noted that The Shed won't let you in if you're wearing 'thongs' (flip-flops to you and me)...but only if it's Saturday..which is was! So, there I was standing in mine freezing my toes off and being refused entry. Since we'd gone all that way and we didn't have any numbers to tell the others what had happened I told Una and Richard to head on in and I'd wait for them in a net cafe or somewhere around the corner where my footwear wouldn't be a problem. They partied for 2 hours and then we all headed back to Richards for a snooze...man it was great not to be in a bunk-bed or in a room with a million people (or 8 or 10 or whatever).

We slept soundly and were up before 9am to get ready to visit the Perth Mint, the one attraction that we'd decided to do and that rather amazingly and very conveniently turned out to be just around the corner from where we were staying. So off we went to see them pouring liquid gold into a mould to make a solid gold bar..amazing! The tour was informative and they guide talked a lot about Kalgoorlie (good because we had a planned stop there on our impending train ride and we intended to take the whistle stop tour to see the place). Time ran out too quickly so we headed off pretty quickly to collect our bags and try find a cab to take us to East Perth station – the Indian Pacific doesn't leave from the main station in Perth but from the suburbs.

So, a very quick visit...not nearly long enough, but it was enough to tell me I'd like to see more of the place so I'm adding it to my 'must visit next time' list (it's getting quite lengthy now).