Mon 21 Oct - Visiting the City of Perth

Our car badly needs a service, so we booked it in to the VW service centre for today. As we had to get it there by 7.30 am, it was a bit of a rush this morning, but we made it and then the courtesy bus dropped us into the City. The driver kindly dropped us close to the Visitor's Centre, so that was our first call. We saw a Katmandu shop, so I was able to get some new sandals to replace the ones that broke and Rodger was, at last, able to get a filter for his camera.

We thought we'd pop into the Museum for half an hour and then the Art Gallery, but the Museum was so interesting, we suddenly realised that we'd been there for 2 and a half hours! It's been many years since either of us has been to a Museum without children and we were able to stand and read all the information and have a good look at things instead of racing around I at a child's pace!

There were some great fossils, meteorites, rocks and pink diamonds. There were stromatolites and green tree frogs, like the ones we've seen on our trip and we enjoyed looking at the dinosaurs, a whale shark's skull and a dear little honey possum,only about 3 inches long.

We spent the most time in the Aboriginal gallery, reading again about the terrible enslavement of the Aboriginal people for pearling and the determined effort made by the authorities to "breed out the colour" and eliminate their culture entirely.

We decided to have our lunch down by the River Swan and passed by a little park with lots of beautiful flowers and a tower that looked like a space rocket. It was a bell tower and while we were eating on the jetty, we heard the bells chime.

A kindly cyclist told us that there was a free bus from the jetty that would take us to King's Park, our next destination. The bus dropped us at the foot of some steep stairs that went up a cliff and are aptly named "Jacob's Ladder". There were lots of fit and enthusiastic people running up and down them as I struggled my way to the top, but the view out over the City and down the Swan River was certainly worth the effort! King's Park itself was lovely too and we enjoyed walking barefoot over the thick, lush lawns.

All to soon it was time to return to the place where the courtesy bus would pick us up and I was happy to sit down after so much walking! There was a delay when we went to pick up our car as ,when Rodger opened the bonnet, he found the tools still in the engine! This made him wonder if the job had been completed and, as our mechanic had gone home, we had to wait for the Manager to check it, but all was well.

When we got back to Sam & Alex's, it was almost dinner time and we had a lovely baked dinner together for our last evening.