Fremantle - the most efficient port in the Southern Hemisphere

Fremantle is colloquially called Freo, just like Rottnest Island is called Rotto. We took a train from Perth Station to get there - it proved to be a very convenient arrangement as there are frequent services and the journey only takes about 35 minutes. The main street of the city begins at the Railway Station and this is the road we took downtown.

Within minutes, we were at the famed Cappuccino Strip - a cluster of cafes and coffee bars offering coffee of all flavours and hues in cups of all shapes and sizes. It was a brilliant day - the sun was shining ever so brightly and the buildings in this fully-restored town looked charming and attractive. We walked around on the streets and lanes, browsed in stores, went to the post office to get stamps, had coffee, ate lunch, and saw nice buildings.

Then, we walked to the heritage site known as the Fremantle Prison and from there, further on to the Esplanade. The Maritime Museum has an interesting collection. It is housed in two sites - a modern, futuristic, glass & metal structure; and a reconverted godown site associated with the port in the past. We went to the older building because it houses artifacts from ancient times and also because it focuses on shipwrecks. We saw remains of a part of the Batavia - this famous Dutch ship had sunk off the coast of Western Australia.

In the evening, we took an early train back to Perth. After all, it was the 9th of October and we had made a dinner reservation at Balthazar to celebrate our anniversary. It was a fantastic meal! The Balthazar is a great restaurant with a fantastic wine list. The ambience is warm and cosy, the lighting is subdued, the noise levels include a degree of chatter - reinforcing the intimacy of a place well visited, the staff are inspired, the chef is creative, and the manager... boy, is he good, or is he good? Dan knows his wine so bloody well - it is a fantastic learning experience to be simply try his recommendations! Over the course of the evening, having quickly learnt our preferences, he served us one lovely wine after the other (customised recommendations for Sabs and me!). What a treat it was! It was with some difficulty that we extricated ourselves from Balthazar and rolled our way to our hotel.

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Our Picture Album

Here are some pictures from our holiday in Western Holiday. Click on the picture to begin the slideshow.

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Quokkas invite you to Rottnest Island

Rottnest Island has an interesting history: it was given this name by Dutch fleet captain Willem de Vlamingh when he found the island infested with "rats". Rottnest = Rat's Nest. As it turned out, the "rats" were not rats - they are marsupials that are genetically closer to kangaroos than rats, but the damage was done and the name has stuck to the island. These rats are called Quokkas; this island is called Rotto!

Rotto lies in the Indian Ocean, 19 km off the western coast of Australia. We took a ferry from Perth that sailed down the Swan River to Fremantle (which is at the mouth of the river, on the coast of Australia) and changed to a catamaran from there. The whole journey, therefore, took us almost 2.5 hours - longer than we'd have liked to spend just getting there. The island is not very big - it can be covered by bike within a couple of hours. Since it was almost lunchtime by the time we landed in Rotto, we headed straight to the island cafe and having had our fill, moved on to the island bike hire to get ourselves cycles, helmets and a map. It's all well set and organised and streamlined.

Then we began cycling around the island - and within a couple of minutes of leaving the inhabited parts of town, we came across a family of quokkas. Click click clickety click went our camera shutter - the quokkas couldn't care less: they probably see gawking tourists every few minutes. Our cycling route followed the coastline of the island for the most part, and the views of the Indian Ocean along the way were fantastic. We could even see Perth from here, even though it is a good 28 km away (as the crow flies). In the past, the waters around the island have seen several shipwrecks, and there was a display along our cycling route that pointed out the direction in the waters of some of the known wrecks.

Unfortunately, we didn't have the time to circumnavigate the whole of Rotto. On our way back to the Ferry Terminal, we took the inland route - that allowed us to cycle past the lighthouse on the island and also check out some inland freshwater lakes. Then, after returing the bikes and getting ourselves some fresh juice from the island deli, we took the boat back home.

Rotto ended up being a good excursion, but if we were to do it again, we'd like to make it an overnight trip for no other reason except the fact that the 5 hour journey takes too much out of a day to leave us enough time to check out the island.

That evening, we wanted to have dinner at the Annalakshmi restaurant which is so conveniently located on the Perth Ferry Terminal. But we were out of luck - there was a private function on and we were not invited :-(

We met with our friend Greg that evening, and he took us to trendy neighbourhood of Subiaco where we had a wonderful meal together at the Subiaco Hotel. Over a lovely meal (and even lovelier dessert that was served to us by the loveliest Rachel), we shared experiences, caught up on life, discussed Hong Kong and Sydney, smiled, laughed, argued-and-then-made-up-with-the-waitress, and had a great time!



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The Charms of Perth

Perth was "settled" by the English in 1829. Now, whenever I read the word "settled" in the context of Perth, the immediate thoughts that flood my mind are all about how Perth must have been a delinquent teenager who never listened to its parents till, after much counselling from a city-shrink, the town did begin to change, and finally became a settled, young adult in 1829.

Today, the city boasts a distinct skyline, a vibrant city centre, and several neighbourhoods, each with its own character and distinctive feel. It is the capital of the huge state of Western Australia - a state so big that had it been an independent country, it would have been the world's 10th largest in terms of size! It is as big as the total area of the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy, Portugal, and Denmark combined.

One of the major streets in downtown Perth is St George's Terrace. It has a ceremonial arch at one end, and is lined with tall buildings of diverse vintage. We walked down St George's Terrace all the way to Barrack Street and eventually arrived at the Ferry Terminal on the Swan River. This is where people take ferries to suburbs across the river, or to Fremantle. At the Ferry Terminal is the modern-looking Swan Bells - it houses the only bells cast in England that have ever left there. We then walked across through the Supreme Court Gardens, and resumed our exploration of St George's Terrace, crossing Government House along the way.

The weather was perfect for such a walk - it was spring in the southern hemisphere, the air had a certain crispness to it, and the sun shone through brilliantly. On that lovely day, our meandering walk eventually took us to the Perth Railway Station, and after crossing the tracks, we found ourselves in front of the Arts Museum of Western Australia. We took pictures along the way and then, in need of some retail therapy to comfort our tired feet, we made it to the area between Hay and Murray Streets - where there are numerous shops, stores, boutiques, and cafes.

Having made light work of lunch, we were really eager to have a decent "home-taste" meal for dinner and in this pursuit, we walked all the way across to Chinatown in the Northbridge neighbourhood and found a popular Vietnamese restaurant where we ate to our heart's content.

One of the joys of waking up at the Medina every morning was the breakfast we used to have at its Metro Cafe. We have to admit that we were not adventurous at all in our choice of breakfast, relying on a staple feed of fruit salad with yoghurt, toast and coffee, but it was just so wonderful! Our day would begin with a stint in the hotel gym followed by a longer stint at the hotel cafe!

On the next day - our second in Perth - we decided to walk across the Esplanade, a large patch of green lawn by the Swan River, to the Ferry Terminal to enquire about trips to Fremantle and Rottnest Island. Having acquired the details that we needed, we set out towards King's Park. We never quite made it there, spending instead long lengths of time along the river while taking Bollywood style photographs. In the afternoon, using our morning perambulations to justify the indulgence, we made it back to the market area and spent the entire afternoon on shopping. Along the way though, we had lunch at Maoz Vegetarian - our favourite felafel place from Europe. For dinner that night, we made it to stylishly upmarket 9Mary's and had our fill of desi food.

This was the day when we spent a lot of time walking around the heritage streets of central Perth where there are several buildings with character and architecture that dates back to the Art Deco period. We also saw the very ornate His Majesty's Theatre and felt tempted to try out each of the numerous coffee bars that lined these streets.

The next day, we went to Rottnest Island. Read all about it here.



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Western Australian delights

We went to Western Australia for our October holiday - the world was reeling under the impact of the 2008 financial tsunami and Australia was no exception to this. The Australian Dollar fell by more than 15% the day we arrived in Perth! Was it meant to encourage us to shop more while we were there? The cynic in us does think this is the case. :-)

The 7 hour flight from Hong Kong to Perth went past quite uneventfully. What was remarkable about this flight was that the route was a straight vertical line from north to south - we traveled 7 hours without changing timezones! Hrrrrmppph!!! The least we could have been given for all the trouble we took was some jetlag, but were denied this!

In Perth, we stayed at the Medina Grand at the Perth Convention Centre (on the edge of downtown). The hotel had apartment accommodation and we soon found ourselves (suckers to domesticity, as we are) making coffee in the kitchen and doing the laundry! The next day, we began exploring Perth, and you can read all about it here.


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