It would appear that at this establishment, guests are expected to provide their own milk when using the advertised 'all day tea and coffee' facilities. I got told off for using someone else's milk yesterday! I also noticed that the proprietors padlock the kitchen at night. It's official - it's 1981 and somehow I've slipped though a rip in the fabric of time and ended up back in a boarding house during my first year at university. Keep expecting a prickly old Polish woman to step from behind one of the piles of old 'stuff' everywhere and warn me not to cook curry in the attic! This did actually happen when I was first living in West London.
Fremantle. 'Freo', as the locals call it. Looking at its history, I'm again struck by how 'young' Australia and its towns and cities are. The British claimed possession of this natural port in 1829 - colonists began to arrive the same year. Convicts were disembarked here between 1850 and 1868. One hundred years later, this was where 72 Marathon cars were off-loaded from the SS Chusan, a gang of drunken (or at least hungover) stevedores attending to this task with less than absolute dexterity - I have film footage, showing at least one car swinging on the crane and bumping the side of the ship! Although one of the 'sheds' has now been given over to cafes and a much-touted, but rather tawdry market, most of the harbour is a busy with large container ships depositing goods up and down the keyside. There's also a passenger liner terminal, although its berth was empty. As the sun beat down, I sat over coffee and watched the to-and-fro, imagining the chaos of 1968, the cars and drivers all emerging from 9 days at sea, some with family there to greet them. Not for the first time I also realised my father would have docked here, back in the days before 'supertankers', when standard size oil tankers and freighters sailed the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Many of the buildings around the port date back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and in keeping with Fremantle's 'other' role as a tourist attraction, are all spruced and pristine. Beautiful, pastel-coloured stucco, stone pillars and arched balconies, embossed letters spelling out the building's purpose - Dock Building, Customs House, P&O Building etc. Equally impressive, though of a slightly moe contemporary vintage is the Port Authority Building, built in the early 1960s and a fantastic example of that period's architecture. Once again, the sunlight casts its spell, enhancing lines, edges and details.
A wander around 'downtown' Freo, Saturday lunchtime crowds spilling off pavements, more cafes and restaurants than you can shake a stick at, a fragrant and bustling produce market, complete with tanks of 'choose your own' lobster, and then decide to head south and see what I can see. As suggested by Matt, and in honour of our Minch' friend Peta, I had thought of heading south to 'Bunbury', but it's a long drive and getting on in time, so instead make for Mandurah. Set on the Peel Inlet and Harvey Estuary, in only ten or fifteen years, Mandurah has grown to be one of the region's largest 'cities'. I suspect it's very busy at the best of times, but today I discover a huge festival. Stalls, music stages and crowds throng either side of the waterway, and there's a water ski-ing competition in full swing, the loud-speakered commentary delivered with a broad Irish accent - perhaps a nod to St Patrick's Day, there are certainly enough green, foam-rubber hats everywhere. Mandurah has a stunning location, so I park the rental car, join the crowds filing back over the narrow bridge and wander the stalls, gobbling an ice cream until I need to go and find water to wash chocolate sauce out of my beard! Everyone looks happy and relaxed, and it's all a little intoxifying.
Have begun to realise that this area of Australia is a rather lovely tourist destination. I've found parts of Perth which I'm really liking (Beaufort Street close to the slum B&B is a wee bit trendy and buzzing, with a wonderful supermarket called 'Fresh Produce', wherer I have been getting my dinner), and provided you have a car, there are many smaller 'cities' along the coast. Today I will go north, although as I drove back into Perth - pretty spectacular drive along the water - I saw the evidence of an earlier reported bush fire at City Beach, smoke pluming into the blue sky.
Let's see if I can get through an entire day without getting sun screen in my eyes!
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