The never-ending journey

Sometimes luxury is simply staying in one place. These past few days I’ve gone to sleep in a different bed every evening, woken to different sounds, struggled to find a differently located toilet in the middle of the night…it’s been exhausting frankly. Every day I get up, round up all my hastily flung around belongings, shove them back in my suitcase and hit the road again, off towards yet another different mattress.

But if I sound like I’m complaining, I’m not. Moving on every day means you see something different every day – and this weekend has been an extremely varied one because of it.

I left Kalgoorlie on Friday and spent hours driving past waving golden fields which held more wheat than the entire Ashes cricket team could hope to eat in a lifetime, and through the down-at-heel and downright depressing communities that have sprung up to tend to it. The fact that one was called Grass Patch might give you some idea as to the dubious highlights that pass for being attractions in these parts, and I was relieved to reach New Norcia after seven hours horizon-chasing.

Sadly this relief was short-lived. The architecture of this somewhat random monastic community is truly stunning when you compare it to the surrounding flat fields but unfortunately, though my hotel for the night looked grand from the outside, inside it was more akin to that hostel Leo stays in in The Beach. Paint was peeling off the walls, the rowdiness of the bar downstairs could be heard through the paper-thin walls and the ceiling fan whirred annoyingly and managed to be ineffective at the same time. Having been used to air con, flatscreen TVs and, well, having my own bathroom, I became instantly sulky at having to share facilities and cope without so much as a tap to call my own. The service didn’t help – it was by far the worst I’ve had here – and I went to bed with a storm cloud over my head to match those building outside.

Fortunately the next day I was heading back to the coast and, after a look around the outside of the beautiful monastic buildings accompanied by a flock of galahs, I sped off westwards towards the coast and Cervantes. This tiny crayfishing town would be nowhere near the tourist trail were it not for one, rather magical, thing: the Pinnacles, and there is an air to the town that seems to suggest they would rather not bother, thanks all the same. They may not have to for much longer in fact, thanks to the brand-new bitumen of the Indian Ocean Drive which has cut the journey time from Perth and ended the need to get anywhere near the town unless you specifically want to, but for now it’s the only place to stay if you want to view the Pinnacles at sunset – which I did.

The Pinnacles are bizarre rock formations which poke through the sand, forming a sea of columns across a vast area of sand dune. I joined Mike Newton’s Turquoise Coast Enviro Tour for a three-hour trip out to see them in the hope that this time I would understand a bit more about the natural phenomenon that caused these geological marvels. Thanks to Mike I now do, although I wouldn’t like to try and explain it without the help of numerous diagrams and possibly the internet. Suffice to say they’re amazing, and utterly unique. I was spellbound by them again and watching the sun set between them was an unforgettable experience.

From Cervantes I was heading further north up the coast but it turned out, as it so often does here, that the road was in fact miles inland and offered only more agricultural land as a backdrop to my day. Fortunately it wasn’t far to Geraldton, a suburban-feeling town which had nothing besides fine weather to offer on a Sunday afternoon. I lapped it up of course and wasn’t the least bit upset at my enforced relaxation time due to a lack of internet and open attractions to visit.

The town’s museum was open this morning so I learned all about the dangers of boarding a boat anywhere near this coast in the Shipwreck Galleries and discovered that it is here that some of the earliest evidence of life on earth leaving the water for land can be seen. It was fascinating and left me with a greater respect for Geraldton – a great museum is a rare thing after all.

My destination today was Kalbarri and this time the drive really did take in some coastal scenery – and spectacular scenery at that. The sandstone coast along here has been gradually eroded by the water and there are gorges and striated cliffs stretching for several kilometres south of the town. I popped happily on and off the highway, diving down access roads to viewpoints and short walking trails, and snapping away to try and capture the rich red, brown and ochre colours of the rock. Hopefully I succeeded enough to help me remember it.

My day ended with roast duck on the terrace of the Grass Tree restaurant while the setting sun turned the sky blazing red and gave the water a beautiful rosy glow. I may have had to drive several thousands of kilometres to get here but every last one was worth it for that and although I’m not looking forward to packing up the car – again – tomorrow morning, I am looking forward to where it will take me next.

Boom and busts

I rarely go to the same place twice. Always wanting to see more, do more, experience more, I don’t like to return to a holiday destination year on year, take a second city break in the same place or even revisit London attractions I’ve already been to. But today, I made an exception for something truly jaw-dropping and went back to somewhere I’d only just been a few hours before.

The Super Pit in Kalgoorlie (or Boulder, depending on how you look at it) is genuinely one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. Its name, granted, does not inspire thoughts of excitement but once you are standing there on the cusp of a bloody great hole, this vast gold mine seems every bit as awe-inspiring as the Grand Canyon. Alright, so I might be getting a little bit carried away but, trust me, this is an impressive hole in the ground. It’s forever expanding and deepening (the lookout has just been moved so it can be incorporated into the mine) and once finished in 2013 it will be a staggering 3.8km long, 1.35km wide and more than 500m deep. From the lookout the yellow haul trucks which bring out the dirt look like meandering insects but they are in fact the size of a modest house and each tyre on them is worth $26,000 (about £16,000). What makes it even more startling is the fact that all this is man-made. If the Grand Canyon is testament to the power of a river, then this mine is testament to the greed of man.

Because, of course, we don’t really need gold; it’s main function is to look pretty. The town of Kalgoorlie, surrounded by some of the harshest, most unforgiving landscape known to man, exists purely because we like to ornament ourselves and our things. It’s crazy that it’s here at all, let alone that it’s by far the most lively place for hundreds of kilometres around.

In the same way as Las Vegas is a law unto itself, so is Kalgoorlie. The ever-warm and sunny weather combined with the vast sums of cash to be made here make this a place to fly in and fly out of, making a quick buck in half the time it could take elsewhere and having a damn good time while you do it. Back when the mines were smaller and more numerous and the average wage in Australia was around seven shillings a week a man working underground here could earn 14 shillings a day. The ladies working in the brothels could earn enough to pay for a house every single month and could spend more than two thirds of the year travelling first-class around the world on the money they made here in the rest of it.

Things have changed now, of course, but wages are still high here and there’s still an I’ve-been-down-the-mine-all-day vibe to the nightlife. As darkness descends people flood the streets and fill the pubs, sitting on the balconies of these grand old buildings downing pints and swapping tall tales, their work boots still on.

I’ve spent most of the day listening to some of the most entertaining stories I’ve heard on this trip. At the Mining Hall of Fame I went down the mine shaft and listened to ex-miner Jim talk of near-misses with 100-tonne boulders, clouds of lung-clogging dust and dangerous machinery while at Questa Casa brothel (the oldest in Australia) madam Carmel told us about scantily clad prostitutes turning cartwheels in the street, a man who died then revived during his allotted hour and a woman who drove through the building in silent rage, reversing up to try again as she hit every mound of rubble.

I feel I’ve only scratched the surface of this barmy but loveable town today and wish I could spend longer hearing its stories. Because, in a place like this, I’d bet my bottom gold nugget that there are always more.

Cruise control

It may be an obvious comparison but driving an automatic really is like driving a toy car. Not having to change gear takes much of the skill and challenge out of getting from A to B and leaves you, literally, with stop and go. At first my left leg didn’t know what to do with itself. It jiggled up and down in time with the iPod, shifted around making me bang my knee painfully against the steering wheel (I’m so short I sit practically on top of the wheel) and kept trying to get involved with the mechanics of the journey. My left hand kept resting on the non-gear stick (what is that called in an auto?) and excitedly jumping up as I came up to hills or junctions. But as the days – and kilometres – rolled past my appendages settled into their positions and presumably went to sleep while my brain tried to follow.

Because the trouble with driving an automatic is that there is so much less to think about. It tricks your brain into thinking it’s not actually in control of several tonnes of metal and once you throw cruise control into the mix (which I did yesterday as I drove the long, straight road from Albany to Esperance) your right foot doesn’t even need to do anything and you find yourself thinking you’re in some kind of simulator.

I spent much of yesterday gazing unthinkingly at the ribbon of bitumen and endlessly chasing a horizon that never seemed to come any closer. Every half an hour or so I would have to adjust the steering wheel all of an inch to the right or left and then would return to staring robotically ahead or, as the madness really set in, crooning loudly to Lily Allen.

So today came as something of a relief. I’m in Esperance for two nights, in the same hotel no less (the same bed for two nights in a row really is the travel writer’s holy grail), and spent today exploring the Great Ocean Drive scenic loop and the Cape le Grand national park. Fortunately for my numbed brain this involved lots of bends and twisty roads so, although my left leg still didn’t see any action, my right leg and both arms had plenty to occupy them.

The Great Ocean Drive is half amazing, half dull. The first half (if you go clockwise) takes you over rolling coastal hills and to a string of tourism-brochure-worthy white-sand beaches. There are lookouts and beachside strolls along the way and just when you think you can’t possibly find a more beautiful beach – ever, even if you live to a hundred and cash in those airmiles – you round the next corner and, yep, there it is, even more sweeping, more white and more photographable than the last. The second half however is inland, with the purpose of returning you to town via the pink lake. Sadly today it was cloudy so the temperature wasn’t high enough to bring out the beta carotene from the algae which makes it appear pink so it was, if we’re honest, just another lake and I was driving on just another long, straight bitumen strip.

Visiting Cape le Grand national park was a similar mix of the sublime and the yawn-worthy. Getting there took well over half an hour on one straight cruise-controllable road after another and I started to grow glass-eyed with fatigue once more. That is until I reached the park itself and found, unbelievably, beaches even better than those I’d seen nearer town. Hellfire Bay was the sort of place you want to roll up and pack in your suitcase, while Thistle Cove was backed by beautiful wildflowers and home to whistling rock, a stone bizarrely shaped like a howling dog which echoed the noise of the waves through its crevices.

I guess today really sums up the trip as a whole. Half the time I’m marveling at sights you’d swear had been computer generated or at least airbrushed and thinking how unbelievably lucky I am that this is, in fact, work; the other half I’m bored to tears by the endless highway and wishing I could be at home with a Chinese and a cup of tea (that Lily Allen song really did get to me today!).  

Still, if you want to see Australia you have to drive. Far. And so in that spirit I’ve already programmed my sat nav for tomorrow. It says “in 103 miles turn left”. Oh dear.

What lies beneath

Sometimes it feels like everything in Australia is out to get you. Poisonous snakes, jumping spiders, hungry crocs…all these are obviously dangerous but it is not these that are most likely to prematurely end your visit Down Under – drowning, evidently, is what you really want to worry about.

Today as I gazed out at yet another sweeping sea view (this time in the Torndirrup National Park near Albany) I fell into conversation with a local who casually started telling me all about rip tides and king waves. Australia can’t just have waves and currents you see, it has to have those added-value adjectives, the ones which hint at the possibility of death in the blink of an eye. More people die from drowning in WA each year than from all the poisonous species you could name put together. People have been happily standing on the coast here one minute, and washed away by a king wave the next. The sea is a terrifying place.

I spent my day finding out how the sea has impacted Albany and exploring the maritime history of this area and have discovered that it is really is littered with wince-worthy stories of death, dismemberment and disaster. At Whale World I heard not only tales of flensing the blubber from a sperm whale (which was disturbing, naturally) but also of legs being cut off by stray harpoons and deckhands being grabbed by a tentacled squid arm and drawn into the icy depths never to be seen again. At the Brig Amity, a replica of the ship which brought the first European settlers ashore here, there were stories of scurvy, disease and the dispossession of the indigenous people; while the Residency Museum told tales of difficult beginnings and environmental blunders.

But despite its difficult beginnings Albany is far from a negative place. When whaling ended here in 1978 the community sank into economic depression but there is no evidence of this today. Everyone I’ve met here has been very proud to be from this small city marooned on the south coast 400km from Perth and indeed, why shouldn’t they?

The city is set on a beautiful bay within easy striking distance of not only the coastal Torndirrip national park but also the mountainous Stirling Ranges and the rolling Porongurups. The attractions in town have been top-notch too. The Residency Museum is the only place I’ve seen so far to place Aboriginal history directly alongside European, showing how the two mirror each other and helping people understand the issues all the better; the nighttime tour of the Old Gaol with its amateur theatrics and spooky cell visits was the most fun I’ve had sans alcohol on any evening in recent history; and Whale World presented a difficult subject in not only an enlightening way but also a fascinating one, allowing visitors to independently explore an old whaling ship and make up their own minds about the whaling industry.

All in all I’ll be sad to leave Albany tomorrow - and not just because this is by far the largest place I’ll see for some time. The people here have been so welcoming and so keen that I should go away with a positive view of their home that I can't help but promise them I'll be back. I'll be sure to keep that promise.

When travel itineraries attack

One of the easiest mistakes to make while travelling is to try to fit too much in and yesterday I definitely fell victim to the overstretched itinerary. As anyone who knows me will attest, I’m not one to take it slow and I do tend to travel at breakneck speed (even for a guidebook writer) so when I planned to make five stops and travel 500km in one day I thought I could handle it. Turns out I was wrong.

I left Margaret River around 8am and dashed south to make the first tour of the day at Cape Leeuwin lighthouse. I climbed its 176 steps with a lovely German couple I regretted offering to take a picture of (they posed for far more than was strictly polite) and a family of what turned out to be complete bogans. Anyone unfamiliar with Aussie slang may have to look that one up but its meaning may become clear when I say that the three grubby kids all climbed the tower in bare feet.

It was spectacular though. We could get outside on the walkway at its top and see for miles over the Southern and Indian oceans (this is where they meet). There was even a pod of dolphins playing in the surf just offshore, as if on demand just for us.

But I didn’t have time to soak it up. Back in the car it was two hours to the Gloucester Tree (an old fire watchtower you can climb up on metal poles sticking out from its sides), which I barely had time to call in at, and then another half an hour to Northcliffe and the Understory Sculpture Walk. WA was having its hottest November day in seven years or something (being so close culturally to us Brits, this of course made the paper) and I had chosen the peak of the heat to climb out of my air-conditioned bubble and walk 1.2km. Fortunately most of the sculptures were among the trees so shade was abundant and the MP3 player soundtrack meant it was easy to learn about the artwork without too much concentration. There were sculptures of all kinds, from carved wooden seats to thrusting metal flowers wrapped around a tree and I had the place to myself – a hint that Northcliffe’s plan to keep the visitors coming by building this may not be quite paying off just yet.

Back in the car I had about 1.5 hours to drive to the Valley of the Giants treetop walk and this is where I came a gutser, as they say in these parts. First I had to negotiate roadworks – not British roadworks where you barely pass within half a mile of any action, but Aussie roadworks where the bitumen was literally completely uprooted and the dusty, rutted underneath was my only way through. I passed a working digger with about three inches to spare and very nearly ended up in the ditch the other side thanks to its roadhogging but, thanks be to the car hire gods, the car survived unscathed.

The road from here was straight as a tightrope and there was barely an undulation to keep me alert for kilometre after kilometre. I felt very drowsy so pulled in to take a break and decided to climb into the back for a few minutes. The next thing I knew half an hour had passed and I felt like I’d been hit by a roadtrain – fortunately, my in-one-piece car attested that this was not the case. Now late for my 4pm appointment (who knew guidebook research was so much like being a travelling salesman) I had to push on, stifling my yawns.

Suffice to say, I made it in one piece and the tree-top walk was as spectacular as I remembered. Being level with the tops of the tingle and karri trees is by far the best way to understand their great height and the walk around the forest floor allowed me to sit inside a tree big enough to drive through.

Feeling more alert for the 45-minute drive to Denmark I even managed a pit stop at Williams Bay National Park where the deep blue sky made Greens Pool an even more spectacular shade of green than normal and the granite outcrops of Elephant Rocks seem utterly idyllic.

I was left with less than half an hour to shower and change for dinner at Pepper & Salt (a fab new restaurant at Matilda’s Estate winery where I had deliciously juicy steak and yummy shiraz) and wasn’t the best company I’ve ever been for meeting my contact from the tourist board. Feeling like I just wanted to go to bed during one of the nicest dinners I’ve had in a while made me realize that I need to build in more rest time and not spend 24 hours of every day thinking about work. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find time to sit and smell the coffee – both figuratively and literally.

Discovering Margaret River

Today was one of those idyllic days that travel is, in an ideal world, all about. Leaving Nannup and heading back towards civilization around 8am the sun was already beating hard enough through the windscreen that air con was needed and there was not an airplane trail, let alone a cloud, in the sky.

My first stop was Margaret River Chocolate Factory where I had coffee and loaded up on truffles, before driving on to the town of Margaret River to join Sean Blocksidge’s Margaret River Discovery Tour.

Sean markets this as the “tour for people who don’t do tours” and it certainly didn’t bear much resemblance to the coach and minibus tours I’ve previously been herded around on. Our group was just five (six is the maximum) and we all spent the day being driven around in Sean’s 4WD as if we were old friends of his. The beauty of this tour is that Sean knows all the right people in the area to get exclusive access to places not normally available to visit and we literally got to see things we couldn’t have seen on our own – certainly not in a hired 2WD anyway.

We start on the Margaret River itself, which, despite being the area’s namesake, is way down the list of attractions most people are here to see. Canoeing about three quarters of a kilometre out and back is a great introduction to the river – long enough to relax and get into the spirit of the tour but short enough not to be backache-inducing. The others in the group were two couples (one on honeymoon) and it’s easy to see why this is the main market for this tour – with the right person in the boat with you, this would be really romantic.

Heading on out to the coast, we grab coffee at Sea Gardens Café before watching the swell at Prevelly, aka Surfer’s Point. This beach has seen some of the biggest waves in the world over the past few years and Sean showed us unbelievable pictures of surfers riding them and told stories of friends returning to shore with dislocated hips and broken shoulder bones.

From here we head into the surrounding Leeuwin Naturaliste National Park, a protected area of sand dunes which is home to the permanent water source Ellens Brook and dreamtime site Meekadarabee Falls (more a trickle if we’re honest). We pause here to soak up the bush for a while and Sean points out jarrah, marri and karri trees, has us chew on a peppermint leaf and gives us a taste of three delicious local honeys. Talking about how the Aborigines lived off the land here for over 30,000 years and tasting some of the produce that comes from it makes me realize how abundant it really is – it might look like a scrubby wasteland but the truth is it’s far from barren out here.

To prove this even further we head for Fraser Gallop winery to taste some of their wines and have lunch in among the barrels of their shed. This is not something the general public can do and visiting a winery this way is far better than any cellar door experience – we get three whole bottles between us for a start. Both the whites (a sauvignon blanc semillon, or SBS, and a chardonnay) are lovely but the real treat here are the award-winning reds. We all want a glass of the cabernet merlot and as we finish up Sean produces a bottle of the cabernet sauvignon, which in its 2007 vintage won Best Bourdeaux Blend at the Decanter World Wine Awards. It’s so smooth, so velvety and so smoky that I could down the bottle but there’s one more place to visit: the Willyabrup cliffs, and it won’t pay to be tipsy as we walk along the coast.

Wandering along the path here (part of the long-distance Cape to Cape walking track) is the perfect end to the day. The views are spectacular under the still-dazzling blue sky, the wildflowers add splashes of vibrant colour to the scrubland under foot and off the coast the beady-eyed are rewarded with sightings of migrating whales blowing.

Unlike most tours, this one has been genuinely enlightening – as well as completely considerate of its surroundings. It’s been lovely to spend the day in a group too and it almost makes me sad to go back to the lonely open road tomorrow. Still, I reckon I’ll survive – I’m taking some Margaret River wines with me after all.

Burning rubber

I feel slightly guilty admitting it but hiring a car is the best thing I’ve done so far on this trip. I may pretend to be the intrepid traveler but the truth is that travelling with my own vehicle is far more comfortable (it has air con for a start), involves much less lugging of suitcases and means I can see so much more than if I braved the public transport network.

Since picking the car up in Perth on Monday I’ve travelled over 500km and spent my days zigzagging around the area south of the city to Bunbury, Margaret River and Nannup, getting to know the region so much better than I could have ever done by bus (unless I had weeks to see it in, of course). I’ve been to out-of-the-way wineries, side-of-the-road food producers and am now staying at a rural B&B near Nannup which feels a whole lot less isolated when I remember the shiny gold Holden Omega sitting just outside.

The past two days have been spent on the Munda Biddi cycling trail, a new long-distance cycleway which begins in the outskirts of Perth and is being extended all the way down to Albany on the south coast. I’ve seen large chunks of the trail from the saddle (plus lots of its access points from the road) and it really is beautiful. It winds through the karri and jarra forests, sometimes emerging into hot, dusty scrubland, at other times plunging into thick woodland. Birdwatchers would be in their element here – I’ve seen dozens of different species including cockatoos, galahs and wrens and am told that my home for the night, the Blue House, perched on top of a small hill overlooking fields and forest, is the perfect place to spot lots of dazzling blue wrens.

Considering the dry landscape and unrelenting sun it’s amazing to see anything alive at all out here, but there have been numerous wild flowers of all different colours, including some wonderful orchids, poking their heads through from the gravel and a whole host of lizards, snakes and goannas have crossed my path (or rather, darted from it) as I’ve cycled or walked by.

I wish I had a bit longer here but, as is the curse of the travel writer, I have other places to get to. I’m starting to feel the pain of my itinerary with its 6am starts, long drives and endless new faces but that open road feeling is getting me through and I’m loving the constant thrill of the new. And besides, tomorrow includes chocolate and wine tasting – what could be better than that?

Fremantle for loners

The weekends are the worst part of the week for travel writers. Come Friday the locals you’ve barely seen all week suddenly appear en masse as one big, happy gaggle of family and friendship groups, making the lone journo feel like the poor soul who didn’t get invited to the party – a bit like when your neighbours throw a raucous shindig the night you’ve planned to be early to bed.

Today I really felt the isolation – and I blame Fremantle. On my previous trip to WA I fell in love with Freo, as the Aussies call it. Visiting with my mum and boyfriend I spent many a happy hour sipping coffees on South Terrace, guzzling fish and chips at Cicerellos and knocking back the drinks at Little Creatures – sun-soaked memories that have kept Freo at the very top of my favourite places list for the past five years.

So this morning I arrived by train from Perth in high spirits. I had planned to revisit my favoured haunts and rediscover the laidback port city I’d remembered so fondly. But then I remembered that it was Sunday. The whole of Perth appeared to be in Freo; families with multiple buggies choked the pavements of South Terrace, raucous friendship groups were squeezed into every last space outside Little Creatures and hand-holding couples seemed to be everywhere – most of them meandering along at shuffle pace immediately in front of me.

I could, of course, have jostled with the best of them and grabbed a space in each of the places I’d planned to go, but is there anything worse than being gradually surrounded by groups while repeatedly telling people that yes, they can take that chair? I genuinely don’t mind eating alone but when everybody else is part of a gang it’s hard not to feel lonely.

So my day in Fremantle wasn’t quite what I’d planned. Instead I visited the Maritime Museum to play with the interactive exhibits and still not quite grasp why the Aussies are still going on about winning the Americas Cup and wandered around the markets trying to comprehend how so much hippy tat is still being gleefully sold. I watched herons picking at discarded fish and chips down by the wharf and realized why every Aussie has a hat after walking far too far in the blaring sun. In short, I made some new memories – and they were just as sun-soaked.

The humpback highway

Rottnest Island is (cliché alert) like paradise on earth. There may be more attractive islands in more remote places but Rotto, as the Aussies call it, is so easily accessible, so affordable to reach and so simple to get around that it could rival even the most stunning of tropical idylls.

I was picked up at about 8am this morning by Rottnest Express to head down to Barrack St Jetty for the ferry ride down the Swan River and across to the island which was, although convenient, frustratingly slow. The boat was stuffed to bursting with weekend day trippers eager to get out of the city so loading everyone took an inconceivably long time – plus we had to make two further stops in Fremantle before heading out to sea – and the journey from hotel to island ended up being almost three hours.

It was, of course, well worth the journey. The water on Rotto is an arresting shade of turquoise, the sand is like silica and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky – my camera battery took a beating. I explored some of the bays near the main “port” Thomson Bay and walked up to Bathurst Lighthouse, then joined Rottnest Express’s Adventure Tour for a trip around the island. Our boat was a rigid inflatable (a rib) which was so sturdy it could crash directly into the waves, negotiate the rising swells and turning on a patch of water the size of a credit card, leering several feet up above the water at a 45 degree angle and making everyone grin from ear to salt-splashed ear.

We started the tour in the deep-water channel eagerly scanning the horizon for humpback whales, a species which is currently on its long annual migration south. The desperation was almost palpable with everyone constantly leaping up, pointing with an excited arm then dropping it again dejectedly and, of course, firing up their cameras, but for several minutes we didn’t see anything. Our guide’s commentary became increasingly desperate but then suddenly several humpbacks appeared, three on one side of the boat at first then two on the other, then a juvenile right up close. Camera shutters clicked excitedly all around the boat but I just watched in awe – no photograph can do this justice.

After the whales moved on we continued to cathedral rocks to watch New Zealand fur seals lolling around on the rocks and regulating their body temperatures by diving underwater, leaving just one flipper in the air. A cormorant was feeding its chick on a ledge above us and out to sea a pod of dolphins glided serenely by. I’d forgotten how much being in Australia is like being in a giant wildlife park and was slack-jawed in admiration of this unique continent.

Back on the island I basked in some deceptively harmless sun (I now have red shoulders and a radioactive looking forehead) and got up close to several quokkas, the unique marsupials which call the island home, but quickly ran out of time. The ferries to Rottnest are timed so that if you’re on a day trip you only get five hours on the island – not nearly enough to even scratch its sandy surface. I didn’t get to the saltwater lakes, the windswept “west end” or the snorkeling trails (I didn’t even pick up the bike included in my ticket) but I did get to the Rottnest Hotel for a drink on the terrace. And I did get to see those whales.

At home far away

Flying from London to Australia is strangely like being in an Anglophone bubble. On my flight from London to Singapore almost everyone on the plane was either an Aussie or a Pomme and even in Singapore airport the signs were all in English and the TV tuned to Channel Newsasia with its role call of the most recent Premier League results in perfect Queen’s English.

After almost 24 hours of travelling it’s hard to believe you’ll end up somewhere English speaking. For that amount of effort, passengers from the UK are usually rewarded with exotic spicy aromas, an indecipherable language and locals wearing turbans, wheeling carts or leading donkeys. We expect something different, exciting, perhaps even scary. But my first few hours in Perth I talk to as many Brits as Australians, check into an international chain (the YHA) and am served a drink by an Irishman. It feels like home immediately.

I joined Two Feet and a Heartbeat’s Eat Drink Walk Perth tour as soon as I arrived last night and found that half the group had lived in London so found myself talking about Enfield and the tube network. Determined to appreciate my location a bit more I drank wine from Margaret River but paid as much as I would have in central London which was something of a shock – the last time I was here an Australian dollar was worth about 40p; now it’s more like 60p.

Everything I pay for seems very expensive but Perth has definitely changed a lot since I was here five years ago. So many cool little bars have opened up since the government made it easier to get a liquor licence and the CBD is a lot hipper than it was the last time I tried to get a decent drink in it. Perth only has a population of about 1.5 million people so it can seem overwhelmed by the backpackers and Brits abroad if you go to the wrong areas (Northbridge, namely) but the city centre feels very Australian and you can almost see the mining money pouring in. This is definitely a city on the up and judging by the number of cranes poking their heads over the skyline, it’ll be a whole different place by the time I come back.