The end of our trip was a bit mixed--though it all ended well.

Saturday was our last full day in Perth. We went to Fremantle, a port town about 10km from Perth. It reminds me of Monterey, CA, only smaller. Supposedly this is where a large fraction of Pert goes on the weekend. Our experience? Not so much. I can safely say we walked much of it, and it felt like a ghost town. We saw a few other people shopping and going to the Maritime museum, but that was it. In retrospect we wondered if everyone was out sailing or on the beaches. It was nearly 100F, probably one of the first really hot days of the year. We wished we had gone to a beach.

It has a waterfront with refurbished warehouses, some of which are markets--described in our guidebook as similar to Fisherman's Wharf but much less touristy. They were certainly less tourists but the markets themselves were not worth visiting. They were just full of the regular tourist crap.

All that said there were a couple reasons we still enjoyed the visit: Lots of the buildings downtown were restored from the 1900s and were quite attractive. Fremantle is still a working port, and we saw two ships full of containers and a third that was probably carrying all the cars we saw lined up along the river the day before. We got to watch the third one head out to sea and the tugboat coming back--so fun! Fascination with big ships isn't just for little boys.


Our favorite moment was the tour of the Oberon class submarine at the Maritime museum primarily because of our amazing tour guide. He had served on another Oberon class submarine for quite a few years during the cold war and had endless amounts of details and stories to share. He shared a lot about how you had to escape from the submarines if they sunk--the Oberon class spent almost all its time submerged, how changes in the design allowed them to reduce the number of crew needed versus earlier submarines which made for more comfortable living, the importance of filling the larder in use order (or it's beets every night for multiple days), and even a story of how some surveillance they did during the Cold War in Russian waters resulted in prosecution of spies involved in stealing British technologies . This is the third or fourth submarine I've toured but far the best because of our guide. Jon loved it, too.

As a bonus there was a small exhibit of various working steam engines next door--Dad! I thought of you. We even took a few pictures of them.

After that we gave up on Fremantle drove to the suitably bourgie Subiaco neighborhood in Perth. We freely admit we like some bourgeois in our life on a regular basis. Sadly we missed the lunch hour, so our options were a bit limited. We eventually found a place and had some sauteed fish over "pumpkin mash". I think 'pumpkin' is the generic term used here for winter squash, and Australia seems to be fond of pumpkins and sweet potatoes. That works for me.

And that was pretty much it for Perth. We still want to come back some day and visit the botanic garden part of Kings Park; Jon consoled me that I'll be living a short distance from the botanic gardens in Sydney for the next 5 weeks. Whee!

Sunday morning came early and then all of the sudden it was 6pm and we were waiting to pick up keys for the apartment I've rented in the Potts Point neighborhood of Sydney. More about that awesomeness and our last evening tomorrow!

0 comments