Perth and the Indian Pacific to Adelaide

I touched down in Australia at 2pm after a lovely flight that had involved me watching both "The Blind Side" and "Up In The Air" while chatting to the English lady next to me. She was called Chris and had been living in Perth for the past four years and was surprised to find I was travelling by myself. She asked me how I was getting from the airport to the city, as it's quite far out, and I had to confess I had no idea! I think she felt sorry for me as she offered me a lift. Or rather, insisted on giving me a lift! We got through passport control, passed the sniffer dogs to collect our luggage. I was convinced I was going to be searched because, after answering one immigration officers questions another one sidled up to me as he'd overheard I'd been in Vietnam and was very curious. But they just waved me straight through without even x-raying my bag again. We met Chris' husband and I was dropped off outside my hostel in the city centre. They were really lovely!

The hostel I was staying at was "The Old Swan Barracks" and is basically an old army barracks, complete with Victorian-era facade. Looked quite cool and was so big! It has a kitchen. I think the emphasis on Australia is that you cook in hostels. Oh dear. I have to feed myself again. Good job there was a BBQ at the hostel that evening! Yum yum.

I went for a walk into town the next morning and bumped into a guy staying at my hostel - a South African called Alwyn who is currently in the British Army. We had a look around and then headed off to the beach for the afternoon as it was 40 degrees and I wanted a swim. Stopped off at a Woolworths - here it's a supermarket - and grabbed some sandwich-making stuff for a picknic and caught the train to Cottesloe. The beach is beautiful. White sand and the clear blue Indian Ocean. Gorgeous! We met a couple of English girls there and chatted to them before all going to get an ice cream :D Cottesloe has an art exhibition on at the moment called "Sculptures by the Sea" so there was very odd art installations everywhere that just made the beach that bit more interesting. We stayed to watch the sun set over the ocean before heading back to the hostel and spending the evening sitting outside with a group of people just chatting away.

My second full day in the land of down under I visited Fremantle (or Freo as it's known locally) because I'd heard so much about it. While it was a nice place I must confess I was a little disappointed by it, as it didn't appear to be anything special. Perhaps it was because the weather was overcast and it all looked a little gray... I stayed long enough to have a look around the markets and to get come Cold Rock ice cream (design your own basically - I went for honeycombe ice cream with added cookie dough! Mmmmm) before returning to Cottesloe for lunch and then falling asleep on the beach. Ooops. That evening was spent once again sitting outside of the hostel eating carrots and chatting to a Maori guy that played professional rugby league for a French team. The hostel is nice but area it's in is a little rough (as proved the previous night by a Scottish guy getting into a fight with a Kenyan right outside the front door - two hospitalisations and three arrests followed). As we were sitting there a rather drunk Irishman stumbled passed singing loudly and handed us all a bread roll. Random, and highly amusing.

Having only spent three days in Perth I felt it was long enough and was glad I'd booked myself on the Indian Pacific to leave that Sunday morning. Finding my way to the station didn't prove too difficult and I actually got really excited when I arrived to see the gleaming silver Indian Pacific sitting happily at the platform. I checked my backpack into the luggage compartment and then settled in to the seat that would be my 'home' for the next three days. There was a lot of leg room and luckily it reclines quite a way, but it was quite narrow so sleeping proved to be interesting. I was next to the window so I was extra happy. There was no one next to me for the first part of the journey and I got talking to a lovely English girl across the aisle from me, Esther. We had dinner that evening in the dining cart and were joined by a girl called Jo, from Scotland. The food isn't as expensive as I was expecting, but most of it is microwaved meals and small portions. We watched the sunset from the dining cart and saw lots of emus! But no kangaroos. At 10.30pm we had a couple of hours stop in Kalgoolie, a famous mining town in the bush. We had a quick walk around but at this time of night it was mostly deserted. The only places open were the bars and suffice to say, as fully clothed women, we would not really have been welcome in them! When we returned to the train the seat next to me had been filled by a lady from Kalgoolie who is completely mad, and more than a little strange. Luckily she didn't talk much that evening and I managed to curl up and sleep.

The whole of the Monday was spent on the train. Most of the morning Esther, Jo and I sat in the dining cart trying to spot kangaroos. We only saw three and were very disappointed. Jo said she wanted to see wild camels, and no sooner had she said that than some appeared out of the window. We spent the rest of the morning camel-spotting, much to the amusement of some of the other guests. We were travelling through the Nullarbor along the longest straight stretch of railway in the world. 478kms without a bend. Not even a little one! At lunchtime we stopped at a 'town' called Cook. It isn't really a town. Mostly it's desert. It has a population of five (not to mention five billion flies) and we had a walk around the school - which isn't in use - and the souviner shop which must rely solely on these twice weekly tourist trains. Very odd place. Mind you, it wasn't any odder than some of the people I met on the train! Apart from my lady from Kalgoolie (who said she emphasised with the women from the film 'Misery', yes, the one who broke the guy's ankles), there was a bikie from Melbourne who was part of the Comancheros biker gang (and if you think biker gangs are just groups of guys who happen to ride around on motorbikes think again - they're basically the criminal gangs that run mostly Melbourne and are a big issue down here!) who tried to assure me that while he'd been in Perth for 'bikie business' it had been completely legal... And a part-Scilian, part-Lebanese guy from Sydney with half a metal jaw due to a rigged boxing fight who definitely had been part of Sydney's criminal underworld. He offered me a place to stay in Sydney and was lovely, even if he did have a bit of a dodgy past. Oh dear.

We arrived in Adelaide at 7am the next morning, literally with the sunrise, and stumbled off the train to try and find our way to the hostels. Esther and I were staying quite near each other so we dropped our bags off before heading out to explore Adelaide.