Sunday 2 March, Perth, and homeward

This morning we had breakfast with Ken, then farewelled him as he headed back home to Duncraig. It was so great to have met and spent time with Ken - he made 94 look like a walk in the park. We then had a bit over 12 hours to spend with Todd and Lesley before the leg of our return trip. 

Todd suggested heading out on a cruise up the Swan River, into Perth City and then returning to Fremantle. The cruise left at 12.45 and the return trip took about 3 hours. We went down to the wharf early and had lunch at a(nother) funky brewery called Gage Roads (and met a cute cavoodle pup named Shadow). The cruise itself was a really good way to see the local sights without worrying about traffic, or crowds, or finding our way around. On the journey towards Perth, we hopped around taking umpteen photos of every other thing, but the return trip was much more sedate as we were just able to watch it go by, knowing we had it captured already. There were some massive buildings along the waterfront as we went, but Perth city itself was all huge glass skyscrapers. Todd knew a lot about what we were looking at, and pointed out various landmarks including King's Park, which was on our to-do list for later in the day. It really was a very pleasant way to spend some relaxing hours learning about Perth.

After the cruise, we gathered our bags from the hotel and hopped in Todd's truck to head into the city. King's Park is a huge innercity park (400 hectares) of park, gardens and bushland up the slopes of Mt Eliza looking across the Swan River to Perth City. Ken spent 21 years as a volunteer, mainly on the memorial plaques for servicemen which label trees all around the park, so we were keen to see these. We stopped at one of the children's playgrounds at the park, which was so well set up with equipment and things to play on and around, lawn areas, pond, etc. There were lots of families enjoying the space, and the accessory of choice was the camping trolley, packed up with chairs, blankets, toys and the littlest child. Then we went up to the top where the war memorial is and this was stunning too, but absolutely packed with people - kinda strange for 6pm on a Sunday evening! The views across the the city are really worth seeing (as evidenced by the hundreds of people doing just that).

From there, Todd and Lesley dropped us to the airport where we ate airport food for dinner and tried extremely hard to ensure we were going to be awake long enough to get on a plane. At the time of writing, we are one hour from departure and only one of us is asleep... We are parked up at the gate in case sleep wins and hopefully someone will trip over us and we'll wake up!

It has been a great trip, and very special to have been able to be at the memorial opening yesterday, and to spend time with Ken, and Todd and Lesley. 

Homeward... We are about 12 hours from Auckland, and very nearly on our way.

Photos may follow when I can get some internet somewhere...

Farewell to Cousin Ken
Gage Roads brewery for lunch

Shadow was a baby and still a bit nippy
Views on the Swan

Massive container ship leaving the port

The cranes look like camels from a distance

Enjoying the cruise

We passed a couple of marinas

Perth city on the horizon

Perth City, and the famous Bell Tower, up close

Cool pedestrian bridge

I'm not sure what this building was, but it took up half the riverbank

King's Park children's playground

Setting up for Moonlight Cinema

The Queen planted a gum tree 70 years ago...

Look what a difference 70 years makes!

The war memorial setting is quite stunning, overlooking the river and city

View from the top

More views from the top

Perth at night

Night views

Breakfast at Sydney airport

Last leg homeward

Handover to ground team

Home for me



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