George and Deborah's Great Adventures: Arrived in Perth

We are in Perth! I believe I made the statement, “you have to be flexible when traveling” in our initial blog entry. This notion still holds true - Perth was not part of the original plan.

We had planned to keep our rental car and proceed north from Sydney. We were going to drive the coast to Brisbane and then north to the Sunshine Coast resort town of Mooloolaba. We had booked a condo on the beach for a 3 night, 4 days stay. We were going to use Mooloolaba as a jump-off point to fly further north to explore the Whitsundays and the Great Barrier Reef but alas, none of that happened. Hence, “We are in Perth”.

Our plans were thwarted by the ever-changing weather. In the back of our minds, we thought this might happen but hoped otherwise. To understand Australian weather you have to account for the wet and dry seasons. In the summer, Australians tend to go south to avoid the super-hot temperatures and torrential rains of the wet season. As summer comes to an end they slowly move north. March is the tail end of summer and the north coast is not quite ready for us. The forecast was for rain over the next two weeks with near 90% humidity. With only 3 weeks left of our trip, we chose to move to the west coast with its 25 to 30-degree temperatures with humidity hovering around 50%. The northeast coast and the Great Barrier Reef will have to wait for another trip, preferably in October or November.

We canceled our reservations, dropped the rental car at the Sydney Airport, turned left, and flew 4000 km west to Perth.

Perth is a city of nearly 2 million and is isolated from most populated Australia by the Nullarbor Plain. It has a nice name considering it consists of 200,000 sq. km of life humbling desert and stretches 1100 km across the states of Western and Southern Australia to the east. Perth sits on the Indian Ocean and is closer to Singapore than it is to its own national capital in Canberra.

The Dutch were the first to visit the area in the late 1600s when Captain Willem de Vlamingh sailed up the river and sighted some black swans. He named the area the Swan River and sailed away.

It wasn’t until 1829 that Captain James Stirling sailed up the Swan Estuary and claimed the area for Britain. Soon after British settlers arrived and started farming the area but growth was stagnant. In need of skilled labour, the locals petitioned Great Britain to establish a penal colony. Once the prison was established in the middle 1800s in nearby Freemantle, there was plenty of free labour to build the infrastructure of the city.

Today, Perth is the support center for mineral exploration/exploitation of Western Australia. Most people do not earn their living in the city. Most work in the outback for long stretches of time before returning to their homes in the city.

We arrived in Perth in the late morning after a four-hour flight. We Ubered into the Perth CBD and checked into the Pan Pacific Perth. We were too early to check-in but were given passes to the pool and lounge as we waited.

We haven’t talked too much about our accommodations on this trip. Generally, they have been very comfortable, clean and affordable. We don’t usually stay in 5-Star hotels but the Pan Pacific offered us a deal we couldn’t refuse. The room rate was $130 a night for a double room and when we arrived we were gifted a further “special offer.” For an extra $60, we received an included gourmet cooked breakfast, an upgrade to an executive room with a dedicated express elevator, lounge passes to use at any time, and the real clincher – access to the hospitality lounge between 5:30 and 7:30 each day. We grabbed the offer before they could change their minds.

Our room was (for lack of a better word) roomy! King-sized bed, full writing desk, two lounge chairs, a bathroom with a super soaker tub and a separate shower. In addition, a view of the Swan Estuary.

Our View From The Hotel - Swan Estuary

We arrived in the hospitality lounge at 5:30 pm sharp to find an array of various hot gourmet appetizers, four types of beer on ice, six different wines and unlimited tequila sunrise cocktails. All you could drink and eat for two hours. I don’t think they had us in mind when they created this offer because we consumed those extra dollars in food and drink on the first night that ought to cover us for the week. I can feel my belt shrinking.

All You Can Drink And Eat - Everyday 5:30 to 7:30!

Our first day was spent doing some pool, reading, and sunning before jumping on the Hop-On bus for a tour of the city. I’ll let the pictures tell the tour story but mention we did actually hop off at the waterfront for lunch at the Lucky Shag. After lunch on the dock, we were back on the bus to complete the tour.