Today Rain is predicted! Possibly breaking the 7 month dry spell for Perth, the longest on record! It did finally rain but it was mostly bluster, wind and thunder! We were out for a little while and spotted these interesting birds!The Australian White Ibis looks like it just strolled in off the African plains, but it is a native Australian, though absent from Tasmania. It has become a nuisance in some urban parks, where we observed them sauntering through.

Ahh, a taste of home! $10 Australian is about $6.53 US!

Road trip today! We did some errands in town, though we actually have not been to Perth proper yet! There are so many suburbs around Perth that have all the amenities we need, we have not felt the need to go into the ‘city’! We chose to travel south a little bit and visit a beach! On the way we stopped at a park on the Swan River and discovered that New Zealand is not the only place with eclectic/artistic toilets!

Wow!

We traveled through the south and west suburbs to the small beachside community of Falcon, on a small sliver of land between the Indian Ocean and Collins Pool, a large body of saltwater with it’s inlet just south of Falcon. We stopped at a lookout point and headed out onto the golden beach.

The ‘sand’ seems to be ground seashells!

We enjoyed a walk around the point, past a few people soaking up the warm rays of the sun, past a stand-up paddleboarder entering the water, and found a board walk to take us back to shade!

Up above the beach we turned to take in the view and saw the paddleboarder catch a wave and surf it back into the beach!

We took a more rural route home, past dry brown paddocks, some small acre ‘lifestyle block’ ranchettes and turned off at Serpentine National Park to visit Serpentine Falls. We were too late, the park was closed, bummer, but with the drought the falls is probably underwhelming right now!

We joined my nephew and family on an outing to Fremantle on the Indian Ocean coast to visit the Western Australia (WA) Maritime Museum. Perth, we’ve discovered, is inland, on the Swan River that empties into the Indian Ocean at Fremantle, and about a 45 minute drive from where we’re staying south and east of Perth proper. We enjoyed walking around the touristic section of Fremantle on our way from the parking garage to the Museum, admiring the colonial buildings.

The venue where Joey (my nephew) and his wife Candice had their wedding reception, after marrying in the Fremantle Prison, way back during Covid!

Fremantle has the distinction of being founded in 1829 as a “free settlement” populated by people who migrated by choice. Colonial life was very hard and the land proved very poor for the agriculture these settlers were accustomed to. By 1849 it was obvious that the colony needed help and it was officially announced that the colony had been ‘constituted a penal settlement’ to accelerate economic growth. In 1868 the convict transport ship Hougoumont docked at the port of Fremantle with 269 convicts, the last of over 9000 convicts transported to Fremantle, and the last convict transport to Australia, ending 80 continuous years of shipping convicts from the UK to Australia! Fremantle Prison operated as a prison until 1991! A timeline can be seen HERE.

We continued to the port and The Maritime Museum to see a temporary exhibit about James Cameron, the filmmaker who brought us “Titanic”, and his work as a deep sea explorer. “James Cameron – Challenging the Deep” was very interesting, with 2 perspectives. One perspective was through the making of the movie and the use in the movie of real video footage of the real Titanic wreckage.

The costumes of ‘Rose’ and ‘Jack’ from the movie are on display, more photogenic than the small suitcase sized rovers that traveled around the interior of the real Titanic wreckage.

The second perspective was more about the design, engineering and manufacture of the deep sea rovers and manned submersibles that James Cameron is involved with in pursuit of his passion for deep sea exploration.

A model of the manned submersible Cameron has used in deep sea exploration.

There are many other exhibits to peruse, all with a maritime theme of course!

top left; The Leeuwin Tall Ship docked outside the museum.
top right; A small fishing boat confiscated from Indonesian fishermen in 1980 for fishing in restricted waters off Australia’s north coast.
bottom right; The Parry Endeavour, a sloop piloted by Jon Sanders on his triple lone circumnavigation of the world in under 2 years, 1986 to ’88, to and from Fremantle!
bottom left; A recreation of cargo that passes through the port of Fremantle. Live sheep, scared and traumatized by live shipment. There is ongoing controversy of the practice!

We finished off our visit to Fremantle with lunch and a trip to the park for slides and swings! Then home for a beautiful sunset view!

The view over Perth from our Airbnb porch. The city lights twinkle after dark!

Our first full day in Perth started with a trip to the Doctor! Not for illness or injury, thank goodness! We did a little research and learned that we should get some vaccinations before we continue our travels in 2.5 weeks to Southeast Asia, even if we’ll be there for only a week! We were able to make an appointment right away and see a Doctor who recommended we get 3 vaccines; Hepatitis A, Typhoid and Cholera, as well as the 2024 Pandemic Influenza, and oral malaria meds to take before, while and after, we are in SE Asia! With slightly sore shoulders from the injections, we spent the evening on a walk with our relatives, my Nephew, his wife and 2 little kids aged 2.5 years and 7 months!

We walked to a local park and found the playground. The swing is always popular!

I couldn’t help but notice the bright colored Australasian swamphen, or purple swamphen, known as the Pukeko in New Zealand!

Our walk took us past a horse paddock and this guy followed us along the fence and let us pet it, maybe it was looking for a carrot or sugar!