Perth and the trip across Australia

Lake Cave

Dick is feeling tired tonight, so I am going to do the blog.

We made our way from Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg to Perth on an all night flight. (Business class is great on these long flights.) We stayed a week in Perth and thoroughly enjoyed the city. It is not a large city, so it is easy to get around. We rented a car and went to the beach twice-I only waded, but Dick went all in. I thought the water was a little chilly. One day we drove to a place called Margaret River. It was a charming little town with lovely beaches and caves. We toured Lake Cave which had a reflecting lake with many stalactites and stalagmites and two columns that were suspended on a flow over the lake. The cave was not large, but I think it was one of the more beautiful limestone caves that I have been in.  They were having a championship surfing competition at one of the beaches, but unfortunately the waves were not big enough the day we were there, so there was not action. Driving back to Perth, we saw kangaroos in a field. I was happy that our hotel had coin operated washers and dryers, so I got everything washed. I probably won’t need to do laundry again.

Perth beach

To make our way across Australia, we decided to take the Indian-Pacific train. It took three days and nights. We could not afford to book the sleeper cars, so we were in the red car, not gold or platinum. Which meant that we spent three nights sleeping in reclining chairs with no foot rest and you could not remove the armrest between the two seats. Fortunately the car was not full, so we could spread out and have two seats apiece. I found one set that you could move the armrest, so I could sprawl out over two seats. Surprisingly I slept not too badly. The train made many stops along the way-sometimes delivering mail and groceries to remote places. Most stops were not long enough for us to get out, but there were several planned stops where we got to stretch our legs. The first was Kalgoorlie which is a gold mining town. We arrived there at 11:00 at night, so nothing was open, but we walked the streets and were charmed by the architecture. The next stop was a place called Cook. In its heyday, it had been associated with providing services for the railroads, but now the IndianPacific only comes once a week, so it has become a ghost town. We toured the closed school and other buildings. There had once been a swimming pool (now filled with dirt) and a hospital. Only four people reside there and our train drivers got off there after a night’s drive and would pick up a freight train back to Perth.  The big negative about the place were the flies, hundreds of them landing all over you. The people that live there wore netting over their faces.All of the previous places were in the Nullarbor Desert This desert is very flat and covered in mostly sagebrush type of plants. It had been raining before we went through, so there were puddles.  Next we stopped in Adelaide. The train station is a little far from the city, so we did not really get to see it. But we did take a walk and saw a huge park. It was about the size of Central Park in New York. The final stop was at Broken Hill which was also a mining town. They mine zinc, lead and silver. The town looked similar to Kalgoorlie, but we were there earlier, so we able to eat dinner and walk the streets. 

The view in all directions

The next morning we were close to Sydney and traveled through the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains are beautiful with many vistas of valleys. We arrived in Sydney in the morning and rested. Today we toured Watson Bay and Bondi Beach (Sydney’s most popular beach). It rained today, so we just looked instead of swimming. We did walk around a park at Watson and got thoroughly soaked. 

The Indian Pacific Train

Dick and I have both enjoyed being out of the poverty that we saw in South America and Africa. It is very hard to see knowing that there is not much that you can do. It does make us more appreciative what we have.