Arriving in Perth felt like arriving in an abandoned city. We disembarked the plane, went through baggage claim and customs, all without seeing anyone other than our plane-mates and a hand-full of staff. Exiting the airport itself there was still seemingly no-one around, the attached train station silent and empty. A vast departure to the chaos we'd come to love in Vietnam, it all felt a bit eerie to our sleep deprived brains.
Not only was the city unnervingly quiet but we quickly came to a startling conclusion - in our excitement to plan our time in Vietnam we had forgotten to plan what we were going to do once we arrived back in Australia. We had three days of accommodation booked and a job starting on the other side of the country in three weeks but that was it. We felt a bit adrift. Yes, we normally booked things last minute but we always had a vague sort of plan of where we was heading and what we would do when we arrived. In all honesty, we'd only picked Perth due to the allure of Quokka's, failing to take into consideration just how out of the way the city really is.
This was a problem for some other time. For now we just had to navigate Perth's train system to get us to our accommodation for some rest. Despite being on an empty enough plane that we snagged a whole row of seats each to sleep in, we were exhausted. So we rested and then we fretted, going over plan after plan after plan - working out which would work the best logistically and financially - turns out traveling in a plane for 3000km is still expensive even if you don't leave the country.
In the end we settled on staying in Perth (we might as well explore now that we were there) whilst putting out the feelers on getting a volunteering possibility with room and board included. Apart from that we just had to book our flights and decide on which ones; it was cheaper to fly to Sydney but the 7 hours bus travel to get to our destination was putting us off. In the end, we bought flights to Canberra - why not visit Australia's capital city!
We didn't do much those first three days in Perth. Our extremely cheap rented room was tucked away in a residential area and the nearest train station (20 minutes walk away) was shut for maintenance, so we rested and planned. Our next airbnb room was still residential, but the next neighbourhood over was the bustling Freemantle and this suited us much better. Armed with our Smartrider cards (essential for easy use of the public transport system) we set out to explore.
Combining my love of historical buildings with Bens love of exploring Op shops, we spent our first afternoon in Freemantle exploring it's centre while hunting for bargains in Victorian sandstone buildings. As Freemantle was the first area of Perth to be settled in 1829 and was a city in it's own right (before eventually becoming consumed by the later growth of Perth) there was a plethora of history and colonial architecture to admire.
Once we'd had our fill we headed along the shore-line to the Shipwreck museum, a free museum that was far more captivating than I had anticipated. Although it covers the numerous shipwrecks and maritime disasters Western Australia has been home to since it's discovery, the largest exhibition was about the Batavia.
The Batavia set out on it's maiden voyage in 1628, transporting silver and stone from the Netherlands to their colony in the Dutch East Indies (Now Jakarta, Indonesia), along the way the ship suffered from malcontent and brewing mutiny before being separated from the rest of the fleet by storms. Blown off course, the ship eventually ended in the dangerous waters of WA and wrecked on a reef 60km from the Australian mainland. What followed was a tale of mutiny and murder before an eventual rescue. In the 1970s, the wreck was discovered and excavated, and today, the Batavia Gallery displays the carefully preserved stern of the ship, along with a sandstone arch that was being carried by the vessel.
We couldn't really visit Perth without visiting it's centre, there we walked around the modern Victoria Quay before diving into the past again at the Western Australian Museum. Entry to WA Museum "Boola Bardip" was $15 each which I thought was pretty reasonable. We spent a couple of hours roaming the different exhibitions, and although I don't really feel like I retained much of the information that I read while visiting, it was a pleasant experience overall. I especially enjoyed pressing the buttons that played the noises of western Australia's many strange frog breeds , they even have one that hoots like an owl.
We had explored much of the city hopping on borrowed bikes or the train to see different neighbourhoods, but had still not fulfilled the whole reason we we came in the first point. Quokkas, a small macropod often quoted as being "the happiest animals in the world" can only reliably be found on Rottnest Island and to get there we would need to book a ferry. As the ferry was a hefty $90 each we kept on putting it off, waiting for better weather - I haven't really gone into it so far but the weather was appaling while we were in Perth and sunshine would quickly be replaced by torrential downpours and thundering skies.
As much as we wanted the best weather, at this point in our trip we were running out of time. We’d managed to secure a volunteering position for our last week in the area and we only had a couple of days left in Perth before we had to make our way over to it. So it was time to bite the bullet and get it organised. Through choosing the least popular ferry times, combined with a handy online coupon code we managed to grab our ferry for the much reduced price of $105 for the two of us. I’m not sure this method would work during the summer, when the island is at it’s most visited, but during mid-autumn the boats don’t seem to be at max capacity.
Although now a popular destination for visitors looking for the perfect Quokka selfie, along with those willing to pay outrageous prices to stay in the exclusive location, Rottnest Island didn’t start out this way. From 1838 to 1904 Rottnest was used as an Aboriginal prison, incarcerating up to 4000 Aboriginals and using them as forced labour to construct not only their own prison but buildings in the settlement there. Many of the prison buildings were later converted into holiday rentals.
Despite the weather forecast predicting rain for our day on Rottnest, we managed to avoid the worst of it - a good thing really as we had rejected the bus tour of the island in favour of walking. The crossing was tame enough, and 30 minutes after leaving Fremantle harbour we had arrived to the main hub of Rottnest, Thompson Bay. After a brief look around the main settlement, reading the informational signs and looking around the buildings, we armed ourselves with a map and headed off to look for Quokkas.
I had read that a few liked to linger around garden lake (a small 5 minutes walk away) so that's where we headed first… and we found them. It was slightly anticlimactic really, I thought it would have taken a bit longer to find them, but there they were chilling by the walkway, completely non-plussed by our presence. We sat with them for a bit, and once they noticed I had an apple, they suddenly wanted to become friends! After a quick photoshoot (they’re somewhat camera hungry) we left them to their day and continued our walk.
We spent the rest of our time on the island exploring, heading first to Geordie Bay for some tea and cake, before checking out the lighthouse and barracks. Along the way we met many more quokkas - some friendly, some ambivalent and some obviously not a fan of humans - snapping pictures as they allowed. When we arrived back to the settlement mid-afternoon we saw that we didn’t really have to explore at all to find the small furry marsupials as they seem to invade en-mass around lunchtime.
We had watched the briefing on the ferry over about the do’s and don’t’s of Rottnest and how you must never ever touch the Quokkas, but what are you supposed to do when they leap on your lap to try and steal the food from your hands? It was funny to watch their antics and now all the quokka proof fencing and gates made way more sense, they are nothing if not persistent and not afraid of a little thievery either.
So we had crossed Rottnest Island off our list and all that was left was to head off into the hills near Perth for our “farm-stay” volunteering position. WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) is a simple premise: the Volunteers (WWOOFers) provide 4-6 hours of farming and gardening per day in exchange for their full food and accommodation, and the WWOOF Hosts share their homes and their skills in Organics, Biodynamics & Permaculture farming and gardening with people from other cultures or lifestyles. Maybe it’s because we didn’t go through the official programme but our experience didn’t really align with that expectation.
We certainly provided our hosts with 5 hours work a day - I mainly batch cooked dinner for my hosts family (after repeatedly having to re-clean a kitchen that they trashed every day) while Ben mainly carted around heavy loads in wheelbarrows without inflated wheels - but I wouldn’t say their end of the bargain was upheld. To begin with, we weren’t welcomed into their home but given one of the shacks they rent out to guests on the weekend - this was fine except the first shack we were presented only had a single bed to share; they did allow us to move to one with a double bed. Also, all the food I was preparing for their family, most of it we weren’t allowed to share in and was instead told to eat up the leftovers from what’s provided to their farm stay guests - despite some of it getting a bit ripe. Turns out though, three day old pancakes do make excellent fish bait - although any fish coming from their lake seemed a bit suspect so they were thrown straight back in rather than being eaten. On an entirely separate note, swimming in the lake was not recommended due to the poisonous algae.
I did get to play with some horses, but as they were semi-neglected, semi-feral and underfed this was a situation where I was trying to educate them in animal husbandry rather than learning anything myself. If anything good has come from this experience I at least hope that they kept up with some of the horse care that I tried to impart and they’re not still under the impression that the horses could be re-domesticated within a week!
Looking back, it wasn’t all bad. We spent our spare time kayaking, exploring the bush, fishing and stargazing; we met some interesting people too, and we didn't have to spend any money but we felt like it wasn’t really a fair exchange. We ended up leaving a day early, managing to catch a ride back to Perth where we'd spend a well deserved day chilling out before heading to Canberra to start our adventure in the snow.
Trip Date: May/June 2024
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