A crazy Australia Day, a new arrival, and meeting an old friend from our travels back in 2011.  We crammed a lot into two days!

The East Perth Suites Hotel was a short walk from the train station, and what a result – our apartment proved to be quite superb with a lovely view of the waterways. There was also a self-service washing machine for guest use which was really useful.  It was walkable to the centre, close to a well-stocked bottle shop, opposite a IGA minimarket, adjacent the free tramway and surrounded by restaurants – thumbs up!

That night, having wandered around to get our bearings and get fresh milk for morning tea, we settled on a nearby Cambodian Restaurant.  It was a little quieter than many of the other venues, had some outdoor seating and it was a BYO – perfect.  It also turned out that the food was very good, service excellent and just very low key, the sort of place we like.

You’ll remember that from the previous post that Annmaree and Russell from the train had invited us to The Windsor Hotel in South Perth to meet up with others from the train to celebrate Australia Day.  We arrived at 11am and set about getting to know the others and, of course, partake in a beer or two.  The hotel, which was more a pub, was busy and lively and as it was Australia Day there was a BBQ in the garden giving out free snags.

A young lady came around touting for people to take part in the Vegemite sandwich eating contest.  Whilst tempted, for once Neil chose the right answer, ‘sorry, no thanks’.  She eventually found five victims and sat them down ready to take part.  The stack of sandwiches was huge, it looked like a whole loaf of doughy white bread, you know, the sort that sits in your stomach for days.  The competition started and the noise in the pub got even louder as cheers of encouragement rung around the bar. 

It quickly became a race of two speeds which eventually became a one-horse race and a young boy, aged 11 well on the way to finishing his plateful.  Suddenly it was obvious he was in trouble, he pulled a funny face and shot off to the toilet.  He returned and was awarded a well deserved victory as the other contestants had thrown in the towel, totally beaten.  It was great fun for us all to watch and we hope that the flight he was catching that evening went OK!

Isn’t she lovely

Earlier that day Cheryl awoke to a dramatic message from son Alex, ‘News from Canada…..waters have broken’.  Another grandchild was on the way, but the due date was end of February, and the dads were on holiday in The Canaries so things weren’t going as planned.  As the day progressed Cheryl was discretely checking her phone for updates and apologised to all around the table for having a phone out.  Once they understood the situation everyone was engaged in the ongoing drama and demanded regular ten minute checks for an update.  Eventually late in the afternoon there was another ping and some excellent news.

Meet Lyra, four and a half weeks premature, fully fit and healthy and totally gorgeous. Congratulations to the proud Dads and immense thanks to the surrogate mum and her family for the greatest gift.

Whilst the Australia Day celebrations were still ramping up, we decided that after 7hrs of eating and drinking, bowing out seemed like the sensible thing to do.  We ordered an Uber and headed back to the apartment and a light Cambodian meal of ‘real’ food rather than cheap ‘snags’ and vegemite sandwiches.  It had been a great day and we will keep in touch with Annmaree and Russell.

Hello again

In 2011, whilst backpacking in Sri Lanka, we were told about the concept of Couchsurfing from a number of young folk.  Travellers are hosted by individuals and families at no cost for a night or two in the way that Pilgrims used to be looked after along their pilgramage routes. The idea is to offer hospitality and to get to know people from around the world. You can look for a bed or offer a bed through the website. We thought it was worth trying and created our own profile. 

Shortly afterwards we were accepted for our first Couchsurf with Ian in Kandy.  He was working at The British Council teaching English.  He proved to be an excellent host, finding us some delicious Sri Lankan food and showing us some of the sights.  We have since met up with him several in the UK when he was teaching English to foreign students in Sheffield.  Ian holds both UK and Australian citizenship and lives just south of Perth. 

We arranged to meet and this time he gave us a tour of Freemantle (Freeo) and Perth.  Thanks Ian, you showed us things that we would never have found in a month let alone a day including the highlight of the day for Neil when a massive containership sailed past while we were having lunch in Freeo.  (Neil is fascinated by the whole world of containers and how they manage them – did you know that there in excess of 60m containers in the world?……..yawn, yawn).

A short visit but we really liked Perth and would definitely recommend spending a few days there.

On the road again

We’ve done planes, boats and trains. Next in the plan was a road trip around the south of Western Australia in a Motorhome. Early next morning we arrived at the depot near to the airport. We were excited but unfortunately the lady in the office had undergone a personality bypass and couldn’t have been more miserable if she tried. ‘That doesn’t work, you won’t need this, you’ll definitely need to get one of these, that’s useless, blah blah blah’ and so it went on.

Miss Trunchbull was so scary Cheryl took several videos documenting every little bump and scratch on the vehicle in case we were landed with a massive bill for any damage on return. Thankfully, the guy in the workshop was human so we relied on him for information which we needed and we were swiftly on our way.