Western Australia

G’day from WA

We’re on the plane from HK to Perth and there’s time to reflect that a quarter of the trip is gone already. It seems only a few weeks ago that we were saying our goodbyes in London, yet when I think in detail about the places we’ve been to and the new experiences we’ve had, time appears to slow down and stretch out behind me until it feels as though we’ve been gone for 6 months. Australia is certainly a new leg of our travels and it will be interesting for me to compare the experience with my 3 previous visits – once as a backpacker in 1990 and twice more recently on family holidays to Adelaide and Sydney. This will be the first time to Western Australia and I am looking forward to it having heard good things. WA is a significant part of the country certainly in terms of surface area representing about 1/3. Put another way it is bigger than Texas and New Zealand combined. We will be concentrating on the South Western tip including the state capital Perth and the Margaret River where according to our guidebook ‘wineries and great restaurants nestle in lush, tall forests’. Sounds good to me if only we could get into the flaming country in the first place…..

Bloody Ozzie customs again – We arrive with copious luggage and understandably knackered children @ around 11pm and in spite of going through the ‘something to declare’ channel we’re still there an hour later trying to explain why we didn’t mention the children’s wooden bamboo flutes and croaking frogs. We are given a warning and told to go through at which point Ruby rouses herself from her reverie: “ how about Cooper’s toy bike? That’s made of wood too…” Luckily customs have turned their attention to another unsuspecting tourist and his half eaten apple, which could cost him 6 months in high security prison. At least we were allowed to keep everything including the unnoticed Lao Lao whisky complete with pickled venomous green tree snake for later consumption in Adelaide. Strangely my mates Andy and Rob were retrospectively disgruntled that I’d managed to sneak this through as it had a kick like a wounded zebra and the aftertaste of a reptilian cesspit. The miraculous safe passage of the bamboo flutes didn’t excite them as much as planned either – particularly after the third day of monotonous single note piping.