At long last, the big day arrived, and we were finally bound for Western Australia. After spending so long waiting for the trip to finally arrive from the day we purchased the flight tickets, we still managed to pack late the night before, and be in a state of panic as to whether or not we remembered everything.

With a time difference across the continent of 3 hours, it allowed us to catch the 7:00am (Melbourne time) flight, be in the air for four hours, and land at 8:00am (Perth time). The call for boarding came and it was then that we realised that the plane designed to carry 170 people was actually only taking 35 people, which meant that there was a strange emptiness to the aircraft. Still, as luck would have it, we managed to get the seats in front of the couple with three children under the age of 4 years old. The baby managed to stay quiet most of the way, and the oldest child was not too much of a hassle, but the mother trying to maneuvre herself and a child on the lap around made for some sudden seat jolts. We were able to move around if we wished, so it was not too bad anyway.

The movie shown in-flight was “Practical Magic”, which was somewhat annoying on the grounds that we had seen it at the cinema only the previous week. The upside was that we had won tickets to the movie originally anyway, so we had not forked out unnecessary cash. Seeing as it was an enjoyable movie, but not one to watch again, Trav got inevitably bored, and hassled the flight attendants for the colouring books given to kids. As soon as Diana saw the beauty of the dot-to-dot puzzles, she wanted her own colouring book as well, which meant it was lucky Trav had gotten two of them. Seeing as the logo of Qantas is a flying kangaroo, the colouring books were featured on a cartoon kangaroo with wings, called “Max Altitude”. We think Max might have been short for Maxine because “he” featured a pouch. Oh well, I’d prefer Qantas to be better at keeping aircraft in the air than being anatomically correct in their colouring books…

After finishing off all the puzzles in the colouring books, Trav got bored once more, so hassled the flight attendants again, to see if we could go to the cockpit and see where the action took place. Stayed up there chatting to the pilot and co-pilot for about 15 minutes, and learned all about how to fly a plane, so if anyone needs a pilot in the near future, Di and I can help you out now. No, really. Stop that sniggering.

When we arrived at the hire car company in Perth and were filling out the appropriate forms to say that if we were aware our insurance policy was null and void if we went off-road, on gravel roads, or if the atmospheric conditions included the presence of oxygen, one of the staff went to give the car a quick wash-down to remove road-grime from the previous rental customer. We should have thought that anyone paid to hire cars would be aware that when washing a car with a blast from a hose, it is usually best to close the vehicle’s doors. However, this was evidently not the case, and the driver’s seat had a large pool of water on it when he’d finished.

We decided at this point that it would be best to look at each day of the holiday and award one person every day with the “Stupid Person Of The Day” award. This award would be given to those members of society we encountered that failed to display intelligence in either their actions, words, or both. This man had taken the award within thirty five minutes of our arrival, so he set the standard early.

Challenging the rental car attendant for stupidity was the person behind the pricing policy of RAC maps. The Royal Automobile Club (RAC) of Western Australia is the equivalent of the RACV (for the benefit of those in Victoria) or AAA (for the benefit of those in North America). Road maps published by the RAC are available for $1.50 from RACV offices, and we had purchased one to help us plan our trip before we left. However, we decided to leave that map behind as our “thing we forgot to pack”, so had to buy another one over there. The same map, purchased in the state of publication, was $3.00 from the RAC offices or $6.00 from the WA Tourism Centre. How it could be produced, shipped across the country and sold for half the price in Victoria is beyond us, and we began to get concerned about the number of people that might be eligible for the “Stupid Person Of The Day” award.

We were planning to tent our way around the state, staying in caravan parks as we moved from town to town, and decided to go set up camp toward the end of the day, so we could go for a swim in the ocean afterward. We quickly found out that the people of Perth do not like to travel very far on public holidays, because the caravan park in Fremantle (28km from Perth) was filled. We were told that we would have to pay for 3 nights accomodation if we wished to stay, and that $45 for a patch of grass was not even a regular tent site, but instead, a section of nature strip right beside the road, and five metres from the toilets, because the park was that full. We simply went down the road to another caravan park which did have less shade, but also had plenty of room for us to set up. Admittedly, the first caravan park looked much better, and probably was, but if we were going to pay $45 for a patch of grass, it’d have to be damn comfortable grass. Perhaps I could spend more time of the PhD devoted to the development of comfortable grass, and rent it out to tourists wanting a good night’s sleep?

Went for a swim in the ocean by walking down the path for a very long “ten minutes”, which was the time told to us by the caravan park owners when we checked in. Basically, the walk was along the back of an industrial park, with car wreckers, steel suppliers, and other industry. Walking through this wasteland was a little concerning, on the grounds that we were walking a long way to get to a beach right beside an industrial park, bringing water quality issues up in our minds. We eventually made it to the beach after about 20 minutes in 38C heat, meaning we were VERY much in need of a swim by then. Trav doesn’t swim that much - read: ever - so Di was very impressed that he got in and swam around for a while. The water was not that bad in terms of pollution, and was actually better than we get in Melbourne anyway. Only problem was that Trav forgot the ocean was salty and swallowed a mouthful of it before he realised. Another candidate for Stupid Person Of The Day?

Given that Fremantle is a port town servicing Perth, we decided that we would seek out the services of a fish & chip shop, and sample some of the local fare. It was then that we discovered that nobody in Fremantle knows where their fish & chip shops are, because we ended up driving in circles for ages before we stumbled across one. Actually, there was not one, but three, in the section of road we eventually ended up in, but two of them were closed at 6:30pm, so they we presume this is the reason for Fremantle residents not knowing where they could buy a meal - the shops are already closed by meal times…

Went on a guided candlelight tour of the Fremantle Prison, although the candles actually turned out to be those small torches used by doctors to look into patient’s eyes. The prison was built in 1855, and was still used up until 1991, and frankly, as a prisoner, it would not have been a pleasant place at all. The cells were 4 feet by 7 feet, and the whole prison was constructed out of limestone rock, which would have been an oven in summer and a freezer in winter. Apparently it took about two weeks of hot weather to warm the prison cells up over summer, and from then on it was stifling. All windows had to be closed during morning inspection, and the prisoners were locked up from 4:30pm - 7:30am each day. They ate in their cells, basically lining up to get their food from the kitchen, then going straight to their cell. The only toilet facilities available to them - right up through it’s closure in 1991 - was a metal bucket that they had in the cell with them. Each morning, they would bring the bucket down to be cleaned, and each night, they would pick up a clean bucket as they were locked inside.

There were very few prisoners of note who were kept in the Fremantle Prison obviously, because they talked a lot about only one prisoner - Moondyne Jack - who was a notorious escape artist. They decided to keep him locked in a cell lined with jarrah wood, embedded with 6 inch metal railway spikes, so he could not dig his way out. He still managed to escape from the place though, because they had him smashing rocks in a corner of the prison and piling them up. Eventually the pile got so large, he was out of sight, and while the prison guard could hear him smashing rocks, he was actually smashing a hole in the wall and ran away.

The main problem they had with the tour was that our guide would take us around and show us the cell of Moondyne Jack, and tell us all the above information. As we continued on a little further, an actor dressed in convict rags jumped out and told us all he was the ghost of Moondyne Jack and then described the same story for us. It did not help in making it seem more realistic - just annoying that he did not give out any other details than we already had. You know what it is like when you take a tour of something, and you learn the same thing twice? Well, that’s basically what was happening the whole way around.

We went to the solitary confinement area, and were told all about the cells by the guard. After we entered the cells, an actor jumped out and told us all about the solitary confinement cells. The actor also told us all about the gallows, which we were to visit next, and when we made it to the gallows, we heard all the same information from the tour guide. A little bit annoying, seeing as there were about 140 years of history that could have been talked about, and the same stories kept being told to us…

After the tour, we went back to the caravan park to go to bed. We were extremely tired after the big day, with the time change throwing our stomach clocks into chaos, and we were ready to just sleep. As soon as we got into our sleeping bags, another camper decided that 10pm was the correct time to feed his kids, and while they were waiting for the meat to cook on the BBQ, they might as well entertain themselves with running races. First one to the line had to yell out so that he knew who had won the race. Great. Oh well, we were obviously more exhausted than we’d thought because we don’t recall more than two or three races.

On to Kalbarri tomorrow…

Categories: Travel, WA 1999