Back to Perth

Long straight road from Esperance
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We were up fairly early to sort out the suitcase, have breakfast and for Andrew P to drop Sharon and the kids at the bus station then back to the house to collect Andrew B and myself with luggage to see us off on the 8am coach. It was 7.50am when Andrew B and myself were being dropped off and then PANIC! I realised I'd left my wallet and mobile phone back at the house (the heat affecting my brain!). Andrew P quickly drove me back to the house to pick them up, and I don't know how he managed it but we were back at the coach for dead on 8.00am. The bus driver had told Andrew B in no uncertain terms that he was not going to wait. Phew!

A break from shopping
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We said our goodbyes toThe Perry's (I tried not to show how difficult that was) and we jumped on the coach - then one last and late person arrived, and soon we were off hitting the roads back to Perth - another 10 hour journey of nothing but straight roads, mainly farm land and a different route to the one last Sunday. See the picture out the front of the coach window showing the road. We hoped to be back to Perth by 6.00pm.

Andrew who was having a Pope John Paul II moment - and he wouldn't stop kissing the ground

The dreaded wheel
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As on the way down we stopped off for "morning tea", "lunch" and "afternoon tea". Sharon had kindly prepared a packed lunch - so we didn't have to endure the greasy fast food at the "road-station".

We arrived back into Perth a little ahead of time and caught a taxi back to the B&B we had stayed at last Saturday. After we had freshened up, we had a glass of wine with the landlord and then we headed off into town for dinner and a  drink.

Not too far from where we were staying we discovered The Lido (Vietnamese) Restaurant - see review. After eating we went to a typical Aussie pub for a drink - of course! Back to the B&B for another early night (this jet lag is really cramping our style).

Thursday 29/1 we had an interesting breakfast - readers will note we have not reviewed the B&B - then off into town for some retail therapy - see review. Afterwards, we headed in the direction of the waterfront. On our way we stopped off at S. George's Cathedral. Upon entering this Cathedral, you are instantly struck by the tiled floor which is almost identical to that of S. Margaret's at home. Similarly, the lectern eagle is identical to ours. The feel of the Cathedral, small by most standards, was that in layout and design, it felt like S. Margaret's in certain respects.

On to the waterfront, though the magnificient parks and gardens, with beautiful flora and fauna, we booked ourselves a cruise on a pleasureboat 'Up River" which was set to sail at 2pm. We had about 40 minutes to spare and so went on the "Perth -Eye" - very similar to the Manchester-Eye in that it stopped to let people on and off unlike the London-Eye which moves slowly enough all of the time to allow people on and off. We shared our pod with a grandma and 4 of her 8 grandchildren - we enjoyed chatting to her - this was a good distraction for Andrew who never normally leaves the ground in anything without engines or in anything that makes circular movements. He came close to throttling one of the children who thought it would be a good EYE-dea (sorry I couldn't resist) to get the pod swinging whilst we were suspended above ground at the top of the ferris wheel. Can you make yourself go through all the colours of the rainbow in 10 seconds flat - Andrew can - poor Andrew! What fun!

Back on terra firma I walked away from Andrew who was having a Pope John Paul II moment - and he wouldn't stop kissing the ground. Eventually he caught up and it was time for a light lunch  by the waterfront and then it was time to board the pleasureboat.

The 'Captain' of the boat was a bit of a comedian (he thought). Most of his passengers were from the UK and incredibly, a large proportion from Lancashire. His joking aside, he was very knowledgable about the  Swan River locale, and all that goes on along its banks. Well worth it at $28 each. There was a bar at the stern (a nice Sauvignon Blanc) and seats at the bow made for a pleasant two-and-half hours. WE also got chatting to a young lady from Greece, who was touring before returning home. She had been working in the UK at Barclays Bank (Poole, Dorset) but was made voluntarily redundant, and with he redundancy payout was sight seeing the world before heading for Athens where she hoped her prospects would be better.

Back on land, Andrew had another JPII moment (only kidding) and we waited at the bus stop for the Blue Cat Bus (free travel round the city - and almost to the B&B).

We dropped off our purchases (some thongs - flipflops folks - not what you are thinking) and Andrews new jacket and then we headed off into town for the last night in Perth. With the heat and all we had eaten in the past few days we decided just to have a toasted sandwhich and lashing and lashings of ginger beer. After a walk around the city in the cooling evening air we headed back to another early night.

Friday 30/1

An early start and another interesting breakfast after asking for ham & egg and ham and tomatoes for Andrew we got fish fingers on toast  with a veggie burger-Fr D did get an egg with his!

We had another panic moment - We had decided  to wear the flip-flops we had bought yesterday (they were quite smart ones with fabric uppers), when we took them out of the bag we had 3 of one design and one of another. insead of two different pairs. We decided we had enough time to go down and change them which we did with great appologies from the Manager. We returned to the B&B to get our bags and head off to the airport, checking that Fr D had his wallet before we left.

We arrived at the airport at 10:15 and were checked in for the flight which was due out at 11:50 this gave us time to go through security and have a look around in the terminal. The aircraft arrived and we were soon on board the Airbus A330 a nice spacious aircraft and on our way to Melbourne.