Part 5 - Kalgoorlie and Perth, Western Australia
The train from Adelaide to Perth took three days and two nights, and was without doubt one of the two most memorable train journeys in my life, along with the train from Bangkok to Georgetown. Because everyone knew that they would be travelling together for such a long time, it was possible to start up friendships with fellow travellers that rarely happen in other forms of public transport. Each night, the members of our train carriage would drink, smoke and play cards into the early hours of the morning; it was a fantastic atmosphere!
In the early evening of day two, the train pulled up at the goldmining town of Kalgoorlie, and passengers were informed that we would be taking an hour-long break there. I headed straight to the nearest pub after disembarking, started playing darts by myself, and in a few minutes was enjoying a game of darts with several of the locals. We were getting on like a house on fire, confirming my original supposition that Australians are some of the friendliest people on the planet! After the match, one of my new friends suggested going on a pub crawl, which I agreed to immediately! After three different pubs and moving from beer to beer with a chaser, my mates took me to the red light district to see if anything there would catch my attention! I don't know if you can imagine what the red light district of a mining town in the Australian Outback might look like, but it was worse than anything I could have imagined! The prostitutes were working out of what looked like portaloos and were far from beauties, but then their profession must be one of the hardest that exists. When asked if I wanted to try one of the ladies, my answer was "I've never paid for sex in my life, and I'm not going to start now!". By this time, I was slightly nervous about the possibility of the train leaving without me, but when our two-car convoy dropped me off at the station, I found that my friends in our carriage were holding the train until I got back! To illustrate the camaraderie, this was the only time in my life where a group of people on public transport got on so well that they arrange to meet up again a few days after arriving at their destination. A pub in Perth and day were arranged, and three people from our carriage came to the arranged meeting. I was the first one to get there, and decided to try out a cocktail. After perusing the list of cocktails on the wall behind the very beautiful barmaid, I made my order... "Can I have some 'sex on the beach', please?". We both smiled and then chuckled!
Perth was the most European of the five Australian cities I had been to, in both climate, architecture and feel. As an excursion, I decided to go to Rottnest Island, which involved an 18km boat trip there and back. The island is called Rottnest which is Dutch for 'rats nest', which the Dutch thought the strange animals, called 'quokkas' now, were when they first sighted them in the 1600s. These weird creatures resemble a cross between a coypu and a wallaby.
There was no motorized transport on Rottnest, so I rented a bicycle after the boat trip and started cycling around this beautiful island's various coves and beaches (two photos). The road was tarmacked and easy to cycle on, and at one point I stopped near a cute looking quokka in an isolated stretch of road. I had some biscuits in my pocket, so I broke one in half and threw a piece of biscuit towards to quokka, which sniffed it, and then gobbled it up. From nowhere, another three quokkas appeared, and the next think I knew, the first quokka had come up to me on the bike and had put it's front paws on my leg! Now, never having seen or heard of such a creature before, and noting the suspicious similarity with the rats I'd killed in England and Greece, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and kicked out at the quokka that was threatening to jump towards my throat. It wasn't a violent kick, more of a push to give me the space to cycle off at speed, which I did without further ado. It was nearly time for the boat back to Perth, so I headed back to the pick up point, stopping at a small restaurant advertising fish and chips on the way. The food was once again delicious and I sat down on an outdoor wooden bench and table to eat it. After a few minutes, a couple of dull brown birds with strange Mohican haircuts came up to me and I started sharing my chips with them. I was quite happy feeding these cute birds, and shared a few chips with some local seagulls too, until I heard a rustling sound similar to dry leaves in the wind, I looked behind me and was faced with a huge array of brown feathers and a bird's bum *! "Oh my goodness", I thought, "this must be a male peacock who is jealous about me feeding his wives! I'm sure this bird looks much better from the other side!". So I got up from the bench and walked around to the front of new visitor, and meanwhile, one of the peahens made the most of my distraction to get up on the table and start eating my fish and chips!
Lunch completed, with both the birds and myself satisfied, it was time to get the boat back to Perth, and on the way there was one more surprise in store for me. A mixture of rain and sun drew an incredible rainbow across the sky behind our boat! Later on, in a friendly pub back in Perth, while enjoying a pint of ale, I mentioned my visit to Rottnest to the barman, to which he replied in his strong Aussie accent "Gee didya get ta play quokka soccer?". I laughed and nodded my head, "Yes, I did as it happens.", I replied.
I only had a couple of days left in this wonderful country, and I made the most of them by visiting Cris and her husband, who had moved to Freemantle after leaving Oman. We shared some good memories of my 30th birthday party on the roof of my building in Muscat. My near one month amongst friendly and fun people and a wealth of good memories ended with me flight back to Hong Kong. The reason for heading to Australia in the first place was to check out if all the great people I had met on my earlier travels were typical of the country, or had all the nice Ozzies left? Well, I now had the answer - No, this huge continental island is full of people who will welcome you if you meet them with an open mind and no bullshit. It is also a country which is full beauty and excitement. Thank you Australia for one of the best holidays I've had in my life!
* Noun, entry 3 British slang
