Another minor crisis averted at the Singapore airport; I was online going over some of the emails that Rob and I had exchanged in the weeks coming up to our visit. In one, he asked if we were arriving on Nov 14th, and I said yes. In subsequent emails, we said things like “see you on the 14th” a few more times, until the last email, where I had sent our flight info just to confirm, in which I correctly wrote that we would be arriving on the 12th. However, he hadn’t responded to that email, so as far as they knew, we weren’t coming until 2 days later. A couple quick calls and rather frantic messages left on both their cell phones and their home phone, and they were all smiles, at the airport to meet us at 10 pm when we arrived! Because their flat was simply too small, they’d arranged for us to stay with their friend Elizabeth, in her guest room. So we headed down there and got settled in.
The first day in Perth, we didn’t stray too far from Elizabeth’s place. She had given us directions to the local shopping center, where there was a supermarket, a wine store and not much else, but enough for us! So we got some groceries, made lunch and watched daytime television until one of the boys came to pick us up. That night, they brought over their mountain bikes so we could get around town on our own, and an extra cell phone, so we could get in touch with them when we needed to, and a few maps of the area.
After traveling for almost one-and-a-half months, we were tired of moving from place to place, always finding where to get things, how to get around, and eating in restaurants. Finally, Perth was a place where we could live for a short time, instead of being tourists. We went to the grocery store, ate meals at Elizabeth’s house, packed lunch to take with us when we biked around town, and didn’t do very much that would be considered touristy. One note; the sun in "Oz" is really strong. Even in their spring, you could feel it burn when you were outside. And so, every day after taking a shower in the morning, we just automatically put on sunscreen for the day if we were planning to be outside at all.
Friday night, Rob was DJing at the local gay club, so we headed down there to chill on their roof bar. Saturday we headed off for a day at the beach in Rob’s car.
Perth is on the Swan River, about 30 minutes from the coast. All the way up the coast are stretches of beach kilometres long with huge sand dunes further in. The first beach we went to was pretty busy; it was some of the first hot weather of the summer, and people were taking advantage of being able to get out in the sun. But the water was COLD!! Kind of like jumping into Georgian Bay in June or early July. If you stay in more than a minute or so, when you get out, you can feel the cold seeping out of you.
So we didn’t do much swimming, just lying on the beach and chatting. A little later we headed to another beach a little further up the coast, which was the local nude beach.
Behind the beach and the dunes was the army firing range, so it was only accessible from either end of the long beach. Up in the dunes, there were lots of little lizards and I saw one goanna, a stumpy little lizard with almost no tail.
That night, we cooked dinner at Matt & Rob’s place, then headed out for a night on the town. We started at The Court hotel, which was a huge sprawling place where some people from every group within in the gay community came to hang out and mingle. There were the A-list 20-30something gays, the lipstick lesbians, the goth kids, the butch dykes, the bears, the drag queens, and plenty of fag hags to round out the mix. Only in cities where the gay scene isn’t big enough to allow the segregation of groups to their own bars, do you get such a cross-section of the gay crowd; groups that normally avoid each other at all costs in social settings all mixed together in one big fun party.
After the Court, we headed off to Connections, where we had gone the night before. This is a fairly big nightclub with a main dance floor and a chill-out rooftop bar, with a few little lounge areas scattered around the perimeter. Rob and Matt, being part of the A-gays, knew many of the people there, so we got to meet lots of locals. They were having a toga party that night, so there were a few people dressed up, but mostly just a Saturday night; great music, fun club and great crowd.
The next day was Matt’s mom’s birthday party, so Rob came to pick us up, and we headed to the family BBQ. Yoshi opted to skip it, since he was already tired, and he probably wouldn’t understand anything they were saying anyway. In hindsight, he was right; I barely understood much of the family banter being slung around, but it was great to see the Aussie traditional family “barby”
We left early and headed off to collect Yoshi and get to the docks for our 4:30 cast-off time for our afternoon wine cruise. A friend of Rob & Matt's had called them earlier in the week, inviting them along on a free wine tasting cruise.
How it worked; a wine sales rep provided a bit of history and tasting notes for each wine, and we scored them all. At the end, everyone signed up for how many bottles of each they wanted. As we were traveling, I bought nothing. Luckily, I had this excuse; to be honest, there was very little that I would have bought in any case. All of the wine was priced at $25 or more, and wasn’t all that impressive. Regardless, it was a nice cruise with a lot of very fun people.
Katherine, one of the women we met that day, had everyone over that evening to her fabulous townhouse to continue the party well past Matt’s 10:30 bedtime.
The next week continued in much the same way as the previous week; we slept in, had breakfast, watched TV, eventually headed out on our bikes to explore some of the city. We did some shopping; took the train to the beach; visited the university where Matt and Rob both work; biked the beautiful bike paths around the river, and pretended we lived there for a week or so.
Thursday night we had the boys over and had a BBQ with Elizabeth. We prepared WAY too much food, and had a feast; lamb chops, chicken breasts, salad, roast vegetables, chocolate raspberry cake, yakisoba (Japanese fried noodles) and we got to eat kangaroo! In Australia, you can buy it in the supermarket, in steaks, fillets, or kebabs. We marinated it all day in Elizabeth’s brother’s recipe, and then BBQd it and it was delicious!! The texture was kind of like sirloin, not too tough, a little gamey. The marinade included sesame oil and coriander, so that lent a little flavour as well. Add a couple of bottles of wonderful Australian shiraz and we had a great dinner.
Matt and Elizabeth BBQing
On Friday (our last day in Perth) Matt arranged for us to join a tour with some of the ESL students at his university. Every other week, they take a bus tour to the wildlife center for an afternoon tour. So we were able to go for free, in exchange for acting as chaperones for the tour; this essentially meant just collecting money, counting people on the way there and back, and paying the fee at the park. At the park, we got to see all the things we had been waiting for; we fed and petted the kangaroos,
we petted the wombat and koala,
and saw emus, possums, Tasmanian devils,
lizards, snakes, bats, and birds. The only thing I wanted to see but couldn’t was the duck-billed platypus.
As always, we wished we had just a few more days in Perth, to do some of the touristy stuff we ignored in favour of just chilling. But we had a fantastic time, and will definitely be back someday.
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