Beware, very long story!!
Door: Linda
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Linda
01 Februari 2016 | Nederland, Arnhem
Last days in Adelaide and Perth
So, on Saturday the 16th of January I had to get out of bed really early for my flight back to Adelaide!! My flight was around 7:30am and the shuttle to the airport left at 5am…which was really early, but at least I was there on time! I was really, very much on time, the check-in desk hadn’t even opened yet.
I was in Adelaide around noon, again the hour time difference, which is really interesting! (I know the US has the same thing, but I haven’t gone through that many time differences there in one holiday yet!) I had told Rose that I was coming back to Adelaide and she had asked me to let her know what time I would be back. Which I had done, but I never got an email back, so I assumed she had to work that day. Later that day I got an email from Rose that she had send me an email to let me know she would be at the airport, but it didn’t go through to me. So she was there around the time I had gotten on the bus to go into the city! Which was a bummer, but we agreed to meet the next day!
I didn’t do all that much for the rest of that Saturday. I booked an excursion for Monday to go to Kangaroo Island. So I would have Sunday to do nothing or something if I wanted to and I would have Tuesday to catch my breath from the long day excursion to Kangaroo Island. And I had booked a flight to Perth for Wednesday.
Sunday morning I did the last laundry of this holiday, I wrote some more and I went into the city in the afternoon. Which turned out to be very hot!! It didn’t look like it, because it was very overcast/cloudy, but when I stepped outside, the heat hit me like walking into a wall! I had thought about going to Ayers House, a museum which had an exhibition on 20’century clothes, from a series called Mrs. Fishers Murder Mysteries. I absoluty love all of those old clothes, but I didn’t go there that day. Instead I ended up visiting the State Library…soooo cool!!!! The old wing of the library is a Victorian style library, you know lots of dark wood, beautiful carvings and a great open ceiling!!! I didn’t count them, but I’m sure there must have been at least a milion books, all with weathered red, green and blue covers. There were little niches where they had tables and chairs for people to work on, there was an old clock that was still ticking the seconds away…it was awesome!!!!! I loved it, wish all libraries would still be like that…or maybe I’ll just have to build my own!
Then I went to a food court to have some lunch. It was pretty busy, but I managed to get a table. Then there was a family that sat at the table opposite mine, with the dad sitting with his back to me….which I wish he hadn’t!! For when I looked up, I saw he had what we call a Plummers Cleavage….YUK!!!! While I was eating, really???!! And of course once you’ve seen it, you can’t help but noticing it every time you happen to look in that direction!! Luckily I was almost done with my steak and mushroom pie, so I got out of there as soon as I could!
I had agreed to meet Rose at the zoo around 3pm, when she would be finished with her work. So while I was there waiting for her to come to the front, I talked to a lady behind the counter and she told me she had also worked on a rivercruiseship!!! That was a nice coincedence! We didn’t have any plan in mind, so we ended up driving to a place called Stirling. This is where her mother lives, so we called her and asked her is she would like to go out with us and get a drink. We picked her up from her house and we had something to drink at a café in Stirling. Which was very nice! We stayed there until the café closed, then we brought Rose’s mother back to her house and we went back to Adelaide to find something to eat. Now finding something to eat was easier than finding a place to park! We ended up in a pizzeria in North Adelaide, which was very good!
I went to bed early, because I had to get up early on Monday for my excursion to Kangaroo Island….not that I got a lot of sleep that evening though….
There was a group of deaf people in the hostel, for some sort of Olympic event, can’t remember what that was. Anyway, deaf people can be pretty noisy, let me tell you that right now! They don’t really close doors, but let them shut themselves as it were, which makes a lot of noise, which of course they can’t hear…than there are some that can talk sort of and they make these high pitched sounds, which are pretty loud and of course they also can’t hear the loudness of it…But on this Monday morning, around 3am the noise was absolutely incredible!!! I think they were leaving and had to catch an early flight, but the doors were banging, they were “talking”, suitcases were dragged across the hall, sheets were pulled off of the mattresses…which came back onto the bed with a bang…really it was unbelievable!!! And of course no one was able to say anything to them, because they wouldn’t have heard you anyway…Around 4am they were finally gone, but of course I wasn’t able to get back to sleep until it was time for me to get up!
This time in Adelaide I had a room on the ground floor and for some reason the showers here didn’t have doors to close off the shower from the part where you put your clothes on. With the result that the whole thing got wet and it was hard to put dry clothes on. So this Mondaymorning I went up to the 1st floor to take a shower, since the stalls there did have a door in them.
The excursion to Kangaroo Island was supposed to start at 6:45am at the busstation, which was right behind the hostel. But the papers said I had to be there half an hour before that time….I don’t know why, because when I checked in at 6:10am, I was told I could board the bus around 6:35am…so I had to wait more then 20 minutes before anything happened. O well, I was up early anyway, I could wait another 20 minutes!
Anyway, we left the busstation at 6:45am to go to Cape Jervis, where we would board the ferry and on the island was another bus that would drive us around. It was going to be a beautiful day, already this morning it was warm! We saw kangaroos along the way, right by Myopena, which is a reserve, so lots of water for them to drink from. Once we spotted them, I kept seeing them everywhere.
We were at Cape Jervis around 8:30am and the ferry left at 9:00am. The crossing took about 45 minutes and it went pretty well, no rough seas to bother me!
We arrived in Penneshaw on Kangaroo Island, where we boarded the bus with Daniel, our driver for the day.
First he gave us a handout with today’s itinerary and than he drove us to our first destination, which was Seal Bay, about an hours drive.
Daniel told us a bit about the island along the way and he also told us where the name came from. Which to you might be an open and shut case, but I was wondering about it, because we were also going to see a lot of seals during this trip.
So Daniel told us that the island was discovered and claimed for the UK by Matthew Flinders. He than told a discoverer from France, Nicolas Boudain about this island and where to find it. Now why he did this exactly I don’t know. So this Frenchman went out in search of this island. He found it and when he got there, he was amazed by the seemingly tame kangaroos that came to see him and his men. Of course they were just being curious, they probably hadn’t seen that many people yet, because there were no people living there at the time. Right before this guy came to the island, he noted in his ship’s log that they were running out of meat…so of course the kangaroos sold their curiosity with their lives…over 30 kangaroos were killed and taken, after which he wrote in his logbook that they had meat for about 6 months now…and in honour of the meat they had found on this island, they named the island Kangaroo Island…which I think is a cheap pay off for these animals.
Then Daniel went on to tell us that they had about a million kangaroos on the island, so yes the name is appropriate!! Haha They also have a lot of koala’s, wallabies and so on. What surprised me most was, that in all of that day driving around the island, I only saw 2 dead kangaroos by the side of the road. I mean yes I saw a lot of bleached bones by the side of the road, but still only 2 carcasses…for having a million kangaroos on the island, I thought that was pretty good!
Our first stop, Seal Bay, was about an hours drive from Penneshaw. We had to stop to pick up some people along the way, so we got there around 11:30am. There was a volunteer who took us down to the beach, yes of course there was going to be sand involved again!! But this time I was wearing my walking shoes, I wasn’t going to have the same trouble as at the Great Ocean Road of course, so I came prepared!!!
At the beach there was a group of Australian Sealions and we got to them up close!! The volunteer drew a line in the sand and we couldn’t cross that, so as not to scare the animals, but it was still pretty close, so we didn’t mind! They didn’t do all that much, besides sleeping, swimming and scratching behind their ears, but they were soooo cute!! I have taken a lot of pictures, I must confess, but they were sooo darn cute I couldn’t help myself!!!
Around noon we went to Vivonne Bay, where we had a lunch of bbq chicken and sausage, with salads, breads and a piece of cake for dessert. It was all very good! After lunch, around 1:15pm, Daniel took us to the Hanson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, where we searched for kangaroos and koala’s. And we found them!! We saw a couple of koala’s, all in their own tree of course, all fast asleep. I also took a few pictures here, but also these koala’s are just too cute!! I’m always amazed at how they manage to stay up in that tree and sleep without a care in the world, I would be afraid to fall out of the tree. We also spotted an Echidna, which is family of the hedgehog, only this animal doesn’t turn into a ball when there’s danger. Instead it digs into the sand and if I remember correctly some have survived bushfires this way.
We also spotted a family of kangaroos, so we had a great day! Then of course the wildest animal was asleep near the door of the visitor’s center…the dog!!haha Man that animal must have been tired, he didn’t look up once while we all walked by to get into the center!!haha
After the sanctuary we drove on to the Remarkable rocks, which are just truly remarkable!! They are granite rocks, in really funky shapes on a big rock in the middle of nowhere. Really, they’re on this tip of the rock, where the ocean is banging against it. No one knows how they got there or if the rock was connected to something at one point, nobody knows. It really is amazing!! Especially the way they are shaped, which of course is done by sand, wind and water, but still..there’s one that looks like an ancient soldiers helmet, than there’s one that looks like someone has taken a bite out of it, it’s really remarkable!
Here we also had about half an hour to look around and than we drove down to Admiral’s Arch. Also this feature of nature was remarkable! We had to go down a long wooden stairs to get there. It was really windy down there, actually kind of cold, but did I bring my jacket??? No, of course not, that was still on the bus!!haha I had read about it being windy on the island before I left, so I brought my jacket. But so far I hadn’t really needed it, because it was’t as bad as I thought it would be and I didn’t know how far we had to go for this arch…so yes, it was really cold down there!! But it was sooo awesome!! It was really cool! At this point were also a couple of New Zealand fur seals and they had 2 pups, they were soo cute!! We couldn’t get really close to them, not like with the sealions in the morning, because they were down on some steep rocks right in the ocean.
This was our last interesting stop, Daniel took us to the Flinders Chase Visitors center for our last stop. Where I bought some postcards. There were a couple of people who flew back to Adelaide, so we had to go to the airport first. Then we went back to Penneshaw, where we were supposed to have enough time to get something to eat, before the ferry left for Cape Jervis. But Daniel drove through the town to show us where to get something to eat and by the time he stopped somewhere, we didn’t have that much time to eat really. I went to a pizza place, where I got some fries, thinking that wouldn’t take as long to make…but it took quite some time. And then they gave it to me in a bag, which was really full and hot of course!! Daniel drove me back to the ferry, he said he would take people back, but all of them walked back to the ferry without telling him. I had wanted to walk as well, but he was standing there waiting and I didn’t want him to wait there for nothing, so I had him drive me back to the ferry. I was the only one on the bus!
The ferry left Penneshaw around 7:30pm. I ate my fries on the ferry and got something to drink there. Then I had to stand outside and get some fresh air, didn’t really feel very well. The wind had picked up over the day, so the sea was rougher than on our way up. Plus I had the added benefit of seeing the sun go down, that was really great! While I was standing there I was thinking of how we hadn’t seen any dolphins yet and I swear, just as I had thought that thought, there was a dolphin jumping out of the water!!!! Unfortunately it was only one and he didn’t come back after that, but I swear he was there and I saw him!!!
Once back at Cape Jervis, I had to take a pill again. I really wasn’t feeling very well and driving back to Adelaide wasn’t going to be a smooth ride either. It is a very winding road, going up and down into the mountains. We had to wait a while for another bus to come to pick up some people going to a different stop in Adelaide. So by the time we were on our way it was dusk…the best time for kangaroos and koala’s to wake up and walk around…so my mantra during that whole trip was for the koala’s to stay up in their trees and the kangaroos to stay on their side of the roads!! The roads were really dark, so it was a safe bet that we would hit something if they would have crossed the road!!
I didn’t sleep on the bus, eventhough I had trouble keeping my eyes open. But I didn’t want to get really sick on the bus, so I waited until we got to the road going into Adelaide before I closed my eyes! We were back around 11:30pm, I walked back tot the hostel and went to bed straight away. No more groups of deaf people walking around tonight and the rest seemed pretty quiet, so I had a good nights sleep!!
Tuesday was a nice day for sleeping in, then after getting dressed and having breakfast, I checked in for my flight to Perth. At the desk of the hostel I asked the lady to print my boarding pass. And she had brought her bunny to work today!!! He was really cute!! Tiny, with ears up and he had the same color as my rabbit!!! She let me pet him for a while and I showed her the pictures of my rabbit of course!!
I had tried to call Rose from a payphone at the hostel, but the stupid thing ate all of my coins. So I went out into the city, got some stamps, got some money, bought a sandwich to get some coins and I tried again in the city. This time it worked and we agreed to meet at 5pm, our final dinner! The weather was really sticky, it was really hot, but overcast, even the wind was warm!!
I went to a food court, got something to drink and sat there, writing for a couple of hours. Then I walked around and went to meet Rose at 5pm. We had dinner in a pub, the café at the Stag Hotel. We both had the salmon special, which looked pretty good. Only thing was, that the salmon was really raw and we both didn’t like it, so we asked if the chef could put it on the stove for another minute. When the waiter came back, he had given us new ones, which were a lot better!! Only thing was..there was a crust of some sort of nuts on the salmon…on this new one, the crust was on the side of the skin…the part you don’t eat!! Hahah But we didn’t want to send it back again! We didn’t stay there that long, when we were done, Rose took me back to the hostel and she was going to see for the next day wether or not she had to go to work.
Wednesday I got up on time, took a shower and got dressed and packed up all of my stuff. I checked out of the hostel around 9:30am, put my suitcase in storage and checked my email in the lobby. Rose send me an email that she didn’t have to go to work, so she would meet me at the hostel around noon. At 10am I went out to find the bookstore I had found on Saturday. It wasn’t open at the time and Sunday it was closed as well. So today I went over to see if it was open and it was!! It turned out to be a second hand bookstore, really full of books!!! I found a copy of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck!
I had some tea at a café and I was back at the hostel at a quarter to 12, when Rose came in as well! We got into her car and went over to the place where we had wanted to get a fresh juice the first time we went there. But ever since then we were always too late to get one of their juices, this time were finally got one!! We had lunch there, with one of their fresh juices and after lunch Rose took me to the airport. She didn’t park her car to come with me, it was really expensive and there’s nothing much you can do there anyway. So she dropped me off, we took one last picture with her stuffed animal panda and we went off in different directions.
My flight to Perth was at 3pm and I was there at 4pm…huh?! Yes that’s right it was about a 3 hour flight, but there was another time change, so I got there at 4pm!! From the airport I took the bus into the city. Wasn’t sure where I had to get off of the bus, but it turned out that I had gone too far and I had to walk a while to get to the hostel there. In this hostel I had also booked a double room. The hostel building was right next to the train tracks…and my room was on that side of the building….great!!
I dumped my stuff and went out to get some groceries and to find a payphone. On the ship I had a couple from Perth, who were originally from the Netherlands. They came with us from Amsterdam to Basel and from Basel they came back to Amsterdam with us. When they left they told me that I could just get their address and everything to come and see them when I was in Perth, but as a Receptionist I do not have access to their address, we only get first and last names on the ship. So after a week or so when they had gone back home, I got an email on the ship with their details and the invitation to come and see them!!
So I had kept them updated on when I would be there and I was going to call them that Wednesday so we could make arrangements for Thursday. But there was no payphone at the hostel, eventhough their information flyer said they had one and the ones I found in the city center I didn’t want to touch!!
So I went back to the hostel and send them an email. We send emails back and forth and agreed that I would take the train to come and see them, they would pick me up at the station and I would come and have lunch at their house. So all was settled.
As I said my room was on the side of the train tracks and it was horrible!!! A train went by every 10 minutes at least and they all blasted their horns, god knows why!! I didn’t go to sleep that early, I had looked only to see if I could find somewhere else to stay. Then around midnight I had to go to the bathroom and there was this drunk girl on in a fit, because she had hurt her toe and blablabla…then she put up a racket in the hallway, where the staff managed to get her to go to the hospital to have it checked out. But that really was the last straw, I wasn’t staying there!! I went down to the reception, to ask them if they had another room to move to. But all they had was a more expensive twin room with it’s own bathroom, on the other side of the building, or some earplugs….
I had already found a cheaper hotel, so I booked that, put most of my stuff back into my suitcase and tried to get some sleep.
I was up early on Thursday, because the trains started going by again early. I swear around 7am, there were at least 6 trains passing in about 10 minutes!!!! It was really bad!!
I got up early, got dressed, had breakfast and packed up the rest. I checked out of the hostel around 8:30am already, I was in a hurry to leave that place, really!! I’m going to get a refund on the nights I haven’t spend there and I asked them if they could do something about the night I did spend there, because I didn’t get any sleep at all, but there was nothing they could do about that! The guy at the desk said he was sorry, but some people heard the trains and some people didn’t…which is BS, I’m sorry, everyone hears those stupid trains, because all of them are blowing their horns!!!! There’s no way you can not hear them, I really didn’t buy that. But I didn’t care I was going to my hotel!!
Which wasn’t all that far away, but far enough away from the train tracks!!! Of course it was too early to check in yet, but I didn’t mind, I could leave my suitcase with them, so I could go to the train station.
I was supposed to take the train at 10:30am to Murdoch station, where Harry and Trudy were going to pick me up. But the train left 10 minutes later, so I was there later than we had planned. Harry and Trudy were already waiting for me and we drove to their house, which is huge!!! Harry is a masterbuilder, or was and he had built this house himself!
It was really nice to be with them, we had tea and talked about the cruise, the things I had done and seen so far. It was funny we talked in Dutch and English!! We had a lunch of mashed potatoes, vegetables and lamb patties..it was real food!! It was great!! Trudy said she had wanted to get us pizza’s, but than she figured I would have eaten enough of those already, so she had made this for me, I loved it!! After lunch we had talked some more and around 2:30pm we got into the car and we drove to King’s Park in Perth.
Once there we found a place to park the car and we took a walk through the park, than we got back into the car and Harry drove us around a while, for me to see how big this park is. And let me tell you it is huge!!!! Later I looked at it on a map and it is really, really big!! Around 5pm, they took me back to the hotel, where we said our goodbyes and they drove back to their house.
I checked into the hotel and got my suitcase. I got a room on the 7th floor. This was great, I got a big room, my own bathroom, free wifi ánd free breakfast!! And it was cheaper than the double room I had booked at the hostel in the first place!!! I was really tired, so I went to bed early!!
Now Friday I could have slept in, because I didn’t have any big plans for that day, but as soon as I started thinking about things, I just had to get out of bed! I got up and got dressed and went downstairs to get some breakfast. It was a buffet with eggs, sausages, white beans, tomatoes..a real English breakfast. Fortunately they also had bread and yoghurt!! It was really good. While I was having breakfast I looked at a brochure for a ferry to take me to Rottnest Island. I had already looked online, but couldn’t figure out their concession regulations. But the concessions were also for YHA members. So as soon as I was done with breakfast I went online again to book tickets. You could choose the time you wanted to go there and come back. Now for Saturday I could go there from Perth, but I couldn’t come back. So I checked if they had anything left if I departed from Fremantle and there were tickets left, so I booked that one. Later I found out the trip by boat was an hour shorter from Fremantle, so that sounded really good!!! So I was covered for Saturday.
For this Friday I wanted to go into Fremantle, so I took the train there. It only took about half an hour to get there, that was really good! Fremantle had a pretty big harbor, I saw a Cruiseship there and several containerships like we have in Rotterdam.
There was a hop on hop off tram driving around, so I checked what time it would be at stop number 1 and waited for it to come. It was supposed to be there around 12:15pm, but around 12:30pm, it still wasn’t there. I walked over to the visitors center to ask some one about it and they called the driver, who said he would be right there. The lady gave me some candy to make the waiting more enjoyable!!! As I walked back to the stop, the tram came right away. I got on and stayed on for the entire trip, which I think took longer than it was supposed to take!! The driver was from Scotland, he had been in Australia for a while now, but he hadn’t lost his accent! We drove by the maritime museum, the fremantle prison, we saw the markets and the harbor where all of the nice boats were. Including an old Dutch ship, het Duyvken.
I got off at the main stop and walked over to the Fremantle markets. There were a lot of stalls with all kinds of things to sell. I found one where I bought some cheap postcards! Than I went to sit down with something to drink and a vanilla slice at a bakery house.(but again the one I had in Brisbane is still the best!) I decided I wanted to go to the Maritime museum, because they had an exhibition of DaVinci’s inventions, but while walking there I got side tracked by a secondhand bookstore!!!
By the time I got to the museum it was 4:30pm, while the museum would close at 5pm. There was another lady who wanted to go and she wanted to buy a ticket…but the guy behind the desk said it would be a waste to buy a ticket when they were only going to be open for another 30 minutes, so he let her go in without buying a ticket…so I looked at him and asked him if he was sure…he said yeah, he was just talking to his co-workersm he didn’t see a thing…so I ran over to the exhibition!!! Hahah
It was great!!!! Most of the things DaVinci’s had thought about had something to do with warfare, especially when he was working for Lorenzo De Medici and lifting heavy things. At the exhibition there were little replica’s of the idea’s he had put into writing, like a submarine, bridges, lever’s to lift heavy poles, a bicycle and an aeroplane…it was amazing what this man had in his mind. And there were also some of his paintings, so he was a very creative person, he must have gotten tired of thinking, it must have been very full in his mind, all of these things he thought of screaming for attention!! I stayed there until the museum closed, thanked the guy behind the desk a million times and went back to the train station, to catch the train to Perth. I got something to eat at McDonalds and went back to the hotel.
On Saturday I had to be in Fremantle around 10am. So I got up early to have breakfast and get to the train station on time. Turned out I had walked faster than I thought, because I was already on the train of 8:45am, instead of the 9am one! When I got to Fremantle I went to the postoffice, to buy some last stamps for the last postcards I was going to send. Then I went to the E shed markets and had a look around. At 10am I was on the ferry that was going to take me to Rottnest Island.
Now of course I could’ve gotten a tour to go to this island, but I didn’t want to spend all of that money anymore and I could just go there by myself, so why would I go on a tour?!
The crossing to the island was a rough one, halfway through I had to take a pill and I practically ran off of the ferry to get to shore! When we got there, we landed in Thompson Bay, where I went to the Visitors center to sit down for a while, preferably in the shade…but there were no benches in the shade and it was really busy inside the center and outside by the toilets….I was not amused! So finally I stood in line at the center to talk to someone about what I had wanted to do. There was a train you could get tickets for and there was a Quokka Walkm where a volunteer would take you around the island to see these animals. Which are sooo cute!! They’re mini kangaroos!! The Dutchman Willem de Vlamingh discovered this island and he thought these animals were rats, so he called it Ratt’s nest Island. But of course no tourist would come here if it were still called this way, so they changed it to Rottnest Island. And of course they are not rats either.
Anyway, turned out that the train was only going twice that day and the walk was only one walk and of course these times were overlapping…I decided to take a ticket for the train, but for some reason, my bankcard wouldn’t work again. I tried to get some money out of the atm, but that didn’t work either, I had to use my other card. When I had gotten the money from the atm, a volunteer asked me if she could help me. I told her about the train and the walk and she told me I would see the quokka’s all over the island, also it was too hot to do the walk…she was the volunteer having to do this walk and she clearly didn’t feel like doing it…after this conversation I didn’t even wánted to do that walk anymore! There was also a hop on hop off bus going around the island, so I did that instead. But before I hopped on that bus, I went to the toilet (the line had gone!) and I went to a bakery to get something to eat, I still didn’t feel all that great. And that’s where I saw my first quokka’s!! They really are everywhere!!
At 12:30pm I got on the bus and stayed on for the whole trip, which took about an hour. Then I got on again at 1:45pm and I got off the bus at the lighthouse, the next bus would be there half an hour later. But as I walked up to the lighthouse I realized there would be no time to get into the lighthouse to have a better view of the island. So I just walked up and as I walked I saw quokka’s by the side of the road, I tried to take pictures of them, but there was a bus full of tourists coming up behind me, stopping so they could take pictures as well…so I decided to just go up, take some pictures of the view and walk back down. And that’s what I did, as I walked down I stopped to take some pictures of the quokka’s. Someone had told me that they were very inquisitive and that if you give them something like grass to eat, they would come right up to you. So I had taken some grass and went up to the quokka’s…one of them ran right up to me!!! He accepted to grass, but it obviously wasn’t the right kind of grass, because he put it down as soon as I gave it to him! Haha
The poor thing almost got up to sit on my lap, I thought it was kind of weird really, it could come up to bite me since I didn’t have anything for it to eat…I felt sorry for it too, so I didn’t stay there long.
After walking along for a couple of minutes I saw some more quokka’s and someone gave them some green leaves from the tree they were sitting under and they really liked that, so that’s what I should have given the others!! They were really cute!! Really look like mini kangaroos, small face, small ears, small feet, really cute!
Than I had to wait for the bus, it was late, so I could have spend some more time with the quokka’s. I hopped on and went back to Thompson Bay, where I stepped into the cathedral to light some candles and I had something to eat at the bakery again. Around 4pm I went to the ferry that was going to take me back to Perth. I was early so I could get a nice seat on the back of the boat outside, for the fresh air and to be able to keep my eyes on the horizon. This time the crossing went okay, for me that is. The sea was rougher than on our way out, the boat was really going back and forth and there was some spray coming in every now and then. Which wasn’t all that bad…but then there was a big dose of water coming in, the people in front of me got really wet!!! It was hilarious, I stayed dry!! Haha
In Fremantle I took the train back to Perth and got something to eat at a Chinese restaurant in the street opposite the hotel.
I had the feeling I didn’t get to see as much of the island as I would have liked to see, so next time I’m going there I will rent a bike, so I will be able to spend time as I like and see as many quokka’s as I want!!
Sunday was my last day in Perth and I didn’t feel like doing anything really. I slept in and took my time at eating breakfast. Then I checked in for my flight back to Amsterdam. My flight to HongKong was around 7:30am, so early again! There was a shuttle to go to the airport, but it would be there around 6:30am, which would be too late for me. So I checked online to see if the bus would be going that early, taking a taxi is a pretty expensive option. Fortunately there was a bus going there that early, so when I went outside I checked to see where the busstop was. Turned out it was in the street right behind the hotel, no more then 5 minutes away!!
Then I just walked around, looked around in some shops, took some pictures and I had lunch at the Coffee Club. In Darwin I had some lunch there as well and this time I had to same things to eat, but they didn’t taste the same at all!!! The sandwiches I had in Darwin tasted a lot better!
Around 3:30pm I was done walking around and I went back to the hotel, to write and start packing. Later I went out for a walk and to get something to eat, I went to bed early..
But in the middle of the night I had to call reception to ask them if they could turn off the music that was playing in the hallway. Normally it would be turned off around 10pm, but this time they had forgotten…of course!
My alarm went off at 4am, I took a shower, got dressed and packed up the last of my stuff. Took a couple of looks around the room to make sure I had everything and I went downstairs to check out. I went to the busstop and I was there too early of course! Haha Someone thought I had missed the bus!haha But no I was there waiting for my bus, but I was there way too early! Good thing it was nice and warm outside. There were a couple of raindrops, but nothing serious. The busdriver was a nice guy, really appreciated my coins for the busfare, thought he would!
I was at the airport at 5:30am, where I dropped off my suitcase. I went through security and all, thinking I would get something to drink at the gate…but no, all of the restaurants were before you went through security, here at the gate was nothing. Only a taxfree store and they didn’t sell any tea or anything. Fortunately I had brought an empty bottle, so I could get some water and I had brought a muffin for breakfast. At least they had comfortable couches!!!
Then around 6:30 am the skies dropped all of their water on Perth at one stroke!!! Good lord, you couldn’t see a thing for at least 10 minutes! So all of the flights were delayed, they were all waiting for the storm to pass and then when they all did go, it got really busy at the runway. So instead of leaving 7:30am, I think we left around 8am, so it wasn’t all that bad.
It didn’t affect us in the least though, we got to HongKong at the appointed time. The plane was almost empty by the way! That may have helped too, there weren’t that many people to get onto the plane, so we were able to leave quickly.
I had a seat way in the back of the plane and the two seats beside me were empty, the whole row of seats in front of me were empty and there were a lot more empty seats around. I could go and sit somewhere else if I wanted to, since it was near the galley, but it didn’t bother me, I was fine right there!
I watched The Intern with Robert de Niro and Ricki and the Flash with Merryl Streep, which wasn’t all that good. It was great to have those empty seats beside me, I could put my feet up and get some sleep!
In HongKong I had to wait 9 hours to get my flight to Amsterdam, which is less than 15, but it is still a long wait! So when we got there I walked over to the Plaza Premium Lounge and asked them if they had a room with a bed available and they had! So I took one for 3 hours, slept for a couple of hours and I took a shower there. Then I had another hour to spend in the lounge, where I had something to eat and I could write. But no one checked the times or anything, so instead of leaving around 8pm, I didn’t leave until 9:30pm. And I could have and should have stayed longer, because I mixed up the boarding times…anyway, I had to wait until 11:45pm. Didn’t know which gate I had to go to until an hour before boarding and then the boarding took forever. They didn’t let people on board according to rows, they let everyone on at the same time…
Unfortunately this time the plane was full, two guys next to me were asked to move, because a couple wanted to sit together. I had a terrible flight, it took forever, I couldn’t sleep and someone walked into my knee in the aisle and I had someone stepping on my toe, so it was actaully a pretty dangerous flight too!! I finished the movie with Merryl Streep and I watched the movei learning to drive with Ben Kingsley, it was allright.
We got back into Amsterdam Schiphol airport at 6:20am, Dutch time. Of course on the other side of the airport, so we had to drive back to the gates. Then I had to walk for miles to get through customs and to get my suitcase!
I had talked to my parents to not come to the airport, it was way too early and it was going to be cold. So I got on the train to Arnhem at 7:30am and I was in Arnhem around a quarter to 9, my dad came to pick me up there, so we were back home at 9am, eating croissants and having tea!!
It is nice and cold here in the Netherlands, it was about 31 degrees on Sunday in Perth and here it was about 7 degrees, so it is a nice big difference!! Haha
This was my last story for my Australia Adventure!!! Thank you all for reading my stories, for all of your feedback!! I’m very glad I went there, I had a great time and I will certainly go back there when I get the chance, because there are still things I haven’t seen yet!!
Thank you!!!
Love
Linda
So, on Saturday the 16th of January I had to get out of bed really early for my flight back to Adelaide!! My flight was around 7:30am and the shuttle to the airport left at 5am…which was really early, but at least I was there on time! I was really, very much on time, the check-in desk hadn’t even opened yet.
I was in Adelaide around noon, again the hour time difference, which is really interesting! (I know the US has the same thing, but I haven’t gone through that many time differences there in one holiday yet!) I had told Rose that I was coming back to Adelaide and she had asked me to let her know what time I would be back. Which I had done, but I never got an email back, so I assumed she had to work that day. Later that day I got an email from Rose that she had send me an email to let me know she would be at the airport, but it didn’t go through to me. So she was there around the time I had gotten on the bus to go into the city! Which was a bummer, but we agreed to meet the next day!
I didn’t do all that much for the rest of that Saturday. I booked an excursion for Monday to go to Kangaroo Island. So I would have Sunday to do nothing or something if I wanted to and I would have Tuesday to catch my breath from the long day excursion to Kangaroo Island. And I had booked a flight to Perth for Wednesday.
Sunday morning I did the last laundry of this holiday, I wrote some more and I went into the city in the afternoon. Which turned out to be very hot!! It didn’t look like it, because it was very overcast/cloudy, but when I stepped outside, the heat hit me like walking into a wall! I had thought about going to Ayers House, a museum which had an exhibition on 20’century clothes, from a series called Mrs. Fishers Murder Mysteries. I absoluty love all of those old clothes, but I didn’t go there that day. Instead I ended up visiting the State Library…soooo cool!!!! The old wing of the library is a Victorian style library, you know lots of dark wood, beautiful carvings and a great open ceiling!!! I didn’t count them, but I’m sure there must have been at least a milion books, all with weathered red, green and blue covers. There were little niches where they had tables and chairs for people to work on, there was an old clock that was still ticking the seconds away…it was awesome!!!!! I loved it, wish all libraries would still be like that…or maybe I’ll just have to build my own!
Then I went to a food court to have some lunch. It was pretty busy, but I managed to get a table. Then there was a family that sat at the table opposite mine, with the dad sitting with his back to me….which I wish he hadn’t!! For when I looked up, I saw he had what we call a Plummers Cleavage….YUK!!!! While I was eating, really???!! And of course once you’ve seen it, you can’t help but noticing it every time you happen to look in that direction!! Luckily I was almost done with my steak and mushroom pie, so I got out of there as soon as I could!
I had agreed to meet Rose at the zoo around 3pm, when she would be finished with her work. So while I was there waiting for her to come to the front, I talked to a lady behind the counter and she told me she had also worked on a rivercruiseship!!! That was a nice coincedence! We didn’t have any plan in mind, so we ended up driving to a place called Stirling. This is where her mother lives, so we called her and asked her is she would like to go out with us and get a drink. We picked her up from her house and we had something to drink at a café in Stirling. Which was very nice! We stayed there until the café closed, then we brought Rose’s mother back to her house and we went back to Adelaide to find something to eat. Now finding something to eat was easier than finding a place to park! We ended up in a pizzeria in North Adelaide, which was very good!
I went to bed early, because I had to get up early on Monday for my excursion to Kangaroo Island….not that I got a lot of sleep that evening though….
There was a group of deaf people in the hostel, for some sort of Olympic event, can’t remember what that was. Anyway, deaf people can be pretty noisy, let me tell you that right now! They don’t really close doors, but let them shut themselves as it were, which makes a lot of noise, which of course they can’t hear…than there are some that can talk sort of and they make these high pitched sounds, which are pretty loud and of course they also can’t hear the loudness of it…But on this Monday morning, around 3am the noise was absolutely incredible!!! I think they were leaving and had to catch an early flight, but the doors were banging, they were “talking”, suitcases were dragged across the hall, sheets were pulled off of the mattresses…which came back onto the bed with a bang…really it was unbelievable!!! And of course no one was able to say anything to them, because they wouldn’t have heard you anyway…Around 4am they were finally gone, but of course I wasn’t able to get back to sleep until it was time for me to get up!
This time in Adelaide I had a room on the ground floor and for some reason the showers here didn’t have doors to close off the shower from the part where you put your clothes on. With the result that the whole thing got wet and it was hard to put dry clothes on. So this Mondaymorning I went up to the 1st floor to take a shower, since the stalls there did have a door in them.
The excursion to Kangaroo Island was supposed to start at 6:45am at the busstation, which was right behind the hostel. But the papers said I had to be there half an hour before that time….I don’t know why, because when I checked in at 6:10am, I was told I could board the bus around 6:35am…so I had to wait more then 20 minutes before anything happened. O well, I was up early anyway, I could wait another 20 minutes!
Anyway, we left the busstation at 6:45am to go to Cape Jervis, where we would board the ferry and on the island was another bus that would drive us around. It was going to be a beautiful day, already this morning it was warm! We saw kangaroos along the way, right by Myopena, which is a reserve, so lots of water for them to drink from. Once we spotted them, I kept seeing them everywhere.
We were at Cape Jervis around 8:30am and the ferry left at 9:00am. The crossing took about 45 minutes and it went pretty well, no rough seas to bother me!
We arrived in Penneshaw on Kangaroo Island, where we boarded the bus with Daniel, our driver for the day.
First he gave us a handout with today’s itinerary and than he drove us to our first destination, which was Seal Bay, about an hours drive.
Daniel told us a bit about the island along the way and he also told us where the name came from. Which to you might be an open and shut case, but I was wondering about it, because we were also going to see a lot of seals during this trip.
So Daniel told us that the island was discovered and claimed for the UK by Matthew Flinders. He than told a discoverer from France, Nicolas Boudain about this island and where to find it. Now why he did this exactly I don’t know. So this Frenchman went out in search of this island. He found it and when he got there, he was amazed by the seemingly tame kangaroos that came to see him and his men. Of course they were just being curious, they probably hadn’t seen that many people yet, because there were no people living there at the time. Right before this guy came to the island, he noted in his ship’s log that they were running out of meat…so of course the kangaroos sold their curiosity with their lives…over 30 kangaroos were killed and taken, after which he wrote in his logbook that they had meat for about 6 months now…and in honour of the meat they had found on this island, they named the island Kangaroo Island…which I think is a cheap pay off for these animals.
Then Daniel went on to tell us that they had about a million kangaroos on the island, so yes the name is appropriate!! Haha They also have a lot of koala’s, wallabies and so on. What surprised me most was, that in all of that day driving around the island, I only saw 2 dead kangaroos by the side of the road. I mean yes I saw a lot of bleached bones by the side of the road, but still only 2 carcasses…for having a million kangaroos on the island, I thought that was pretty good!
Our first stop, Seal Bay, was about an hours drive from Penneshaw. We had to stop to pick up some people along the way, so we got there around 11:30am. There was a volunteer who took us down to the beach, yes of course there was going to be sand involved again!! But this time I was wearing my walking shoes, I wasn’t going to have the same trouble as at the Great Ocean Road of course, so I came prepared!!!
At the beach there was a group of Australian Sealions and we got to them up close!! The volunteer drew a line in the sand and we couldn’t cross that, so as not to scare the animals, but it was still pretty close, so we didn’t mind! They didn’t do all that much, besides sleeping, swimming and scratching behind their ears, but they were soooo cute!! I have taken a lot of pictures, I must confess, but they were sooo darn cute I couldn’t help myself!!!
Around noon we went to Vivonne Bay, where we had a lunch of bbq chicken and sausage, with salads, breads and a piece of cake for dessert. It was all very good! After lunch, around 1:15pm, Daniel took us to the Hanson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, where we searched for kangaroos and koala’s. And we found them!! We saw a couple of koala’s, all in their own tree of course, all fast asleep. I also took a few pictures here, but also these koala’s are just too cute!! I’m always amazed at how they manage to stay up in that tree and sleep without a care in the world, I would be afraid to fall out of the tree. We also spotted an Echidna, which is family of the hedgehog, only this animal doesn’t turn into a ball when there’s danger. Instead it digs into the sand and if I remember correctly some have survived bushfires this way.
We also spotted a family of kangaroos, so we had a great day! Then of course the wildest animal was asleep near the door of the visitor’s center…the dog!!haha Man that animal must have been tired, he didn’t look up once while we all walked by to get into the center!!haha
After the sanctuary we drove on to the Remarkable rocks, which are just truly remarkable!! They are granite rocks, in really funky shapes on a big rock in the middle of nowhere. Really, they’re on this tip of the rock, where the ocean is banging against it. No one knows how they got there or if the rock was connected to something at one point, nobody knows. It really is amazing!! Especially the way they are shaped, which of course is done by sand, wind and water, but still..there’s one that looks like an ancient soldiers helmet, than there’s one that looks like someone has taken a bite out of it, it’s really remarkable!
Here we also had about half an hour to look around and than we drove down to Admiral’s Arch. Also this feature of nature was remarkable! We had to go down a long wooden stairs to get there. It was really windy down there, actually kind of cold, but did I bring my jacket??? No, of course not, that was still on the bus!!haha I had read about it being windy on the island before I left, so I brought my jacket. But so far I hadn’t really needed it, because it was’t as bad as I thought it would be and I didn’t know how far we had to go for this arch…so yes, it was really cold down there!! But it was sooo awesome!! It was really cool! At this point were also a couple of New Zealand fur seals and they had 2 pups, they were soo cute!! We couldn’t get really close to them, not like with the sealions in the morning, because they were down on some steep rocks right in the ocean.
This was our last interesting stop, Daniel took us to the Flinders Chase Visitors center for our last stop. Where I bought some postcards. There were a couple of people who flew back to Adelaide, so we had to go to the airport first. Then we went back to Penneshaw, where we were supposed to have enough time to get something to eat, before the ferry left for Cape Jervis. But Daniel drove through the town to show us where to get something to eat and by the time he stopped somewhere, we didn’t have that much time to eat really. I went to a pizza place, where I got some fries, thinking that wouldn’t take as long to make…but it took quite some time. And then they gave it to me in a bag, which was really full and hot of course!! Daniel drove me back to the ferry, he said he would take people back, but all of them walked back to the ferry without telling him. I had wanted to walk as well, but he was standing there waiting and I didn’t want him to wait there for nothing, so I had him drive me back to the ferry. I was the only one on the bus!
The ferry left Penneshaw around 7:30pm. I ate my fries on the ferry and got something to drink there. Then I had to stand outside and get some fresh air, didn’t really feel very well. The wind had picked up over the day, so the sea was rougher than on our way up. Plus I had the added benefit of seeing the sun go down, that was really great! While I was standing there I was thinking of how we hadn’t seen any dolphins yet and I swear, just as I had thought that thought, there was a dolphin jumping out of the water!!!! Unfortunately it was only one and he didn’t come back after that, but I swear he was there and I saw him!!!
Once back at Cape Jervis, I had to take a pill again. I really wasn’t feeling very well and driving back to Adelaide wasn’t going to be a smooth ride either. It is a very winding road, going up and down into the mountains. We had to wait a while for another bus to come to pick up some people going to a different stop in Adelaide. So by the time we were on our way it was dusk…the best time for kangaroos and koala’s to wake up and walk around…so my mantra during that whole trip was for the koala’s to stay up in their trees and the kangaroos to stay on their side of the roads!! The roads were really dark, so it was a safe bet that we would hit something if they would have crossed the road!!
I didn’t sleep on the bus, eventhough I had trouble keeping my eyes open. But I didn’t want to get really sick on the bus, so I waited until we got to the road going into Adelaide before I closed my eyes! We were back around 11:30pm, I walked back tot the hostel and went to bed straight away. No more groups of deaf people walking around tonight and the rest seemed pretty quiet, so I had a good nights sleep!!
Tuesday was a nice day for sleeping in, then after getting dressed and having breakfast, I checked in for my flight to Perth. At the desk of the hostel I asked the lady to print my boarding pass. And she had brought her bunny to work today!!! He was really cute!! Tiny, with ears up and he had the same color as my rabbit!!! She let me pet him for a while and I showed her the pictures of my rabbit of course!!
I had tried to call Rose from a payphone at the hostel, but the stupid thing ate all of my coins. So I went out into the city, got some stamps, got some money, bought a sandwich to get some coins and I tried again in the city. This time it worked and we agreed to meet at 5pm, our final dinner! The weather was really sticky, it was really hot, but overcast, even the wind was warm!!
I went to a food court, got something to drink and sat there, writing for a couple of hours. Then I walked around and went to meet Rose at 5pm. We had dinner in a pub, the café at the Stag Hotel. We both had the salmon special, which looked pretty good. Only thing was, that the salmon was really raw and we both didn’t like it, so we asked if the chef could put it on the stove for another minute. When the waiter came back, he had given us new ones, which were a lot better!! Only thing was..there was a crust of some sort of nuts on the salmon…on this new one, the crust was on the side of the skin…the part you don’t eat!! Hahah But we didn’t want to send it back again! We didn’t stay there that long, when we were done, Rose took me back to the hostel and she was going to see for the next day wether or not she had to go to work.
Wednesday I got up on time, took a shower and got dressed and packed up all of my stuff. I checked out of the hostel around 9:30am, put my suitcase in storage and checked my email in the lobby. Rose send me an email that she didn’t have to go to work, so she would meet me at the hostel around noon. At 10am I went out to find the bookstore I had found on Saturday. It wasn’t open at the time and Sunday it was closed as well. So today I went over to see if it was open and it was!! It turned out to be a second hand bookstore, really full of books!!! I found a copy of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck!
I had some tea at a café and I was back at the hostel at a quarter to 12, when Rose came in as well! We got into her car and went over to the place where we had wanted to get a fresh juice the first time we went there. But ever since then we were always too late to get one of their juices, this time were finally got one!! We had lunch there, with one of their fresh juices and after lunch Rose took me to the airport. She didn’t park her car to come with me, it was really expensive and there’s nothing much you can do there anyway. So she dropped me off, we took one last picture with her stuffed animal panda and we went off in different directions.
My flight to Perth was at 3pm and I was there at 4pm…huh?! Yes that’s right it was about a 3 hour flight, but there was another time change, so I got there at 4pm!! From the airport I took the bus into the city. Wasn’t sure where I had to get off of the bus, but it turned out that I had gone too far and I had to walk a while to get to the hostel there. In this hostel I had also booked a double room. The hostel building was right next to the train tracks…and my room was on that side of the building….great!!
I dumped my stuff and went out to get some groceries and to find a payphone. On the ship I had a couple from Perth, who were originally from the Netherlands. They came with us from Amsterdam to Basel and from Basel they came back to Amsterdam with us. When they left they told me that I could just get their address and everything to come and see them when I was in Perth, but as a Receptionist I do not have access to their address, we only get first and last names on the ship. So after a week or so when they had gone back home, I got an email on the ship with their details and the invitation to come and see them!!
So I had kept them updated on when I would be there and I was going to call them that Wednesday so we could make arrangements for Thursday. But there was no payphone at the hostel, eventhough their information flyer said they had one and the ones I found in the city center I didn’t want to touch!!
So I went back to the hostel and send them an email. We send emails back and forth and agreed that I would take the train to come and see them, they would pick me up at the station and I would come and have lunch at their house. So all was settled.
As I said my room was on the side of the train tracks and it was horrible!!! A train went by every 10 minutes at least and they all blasted their horns, god knows why!! I didn’t go to sleep that early, I had looked only to see if I could find somewhere else to stay. Then around midnight I had to go to the bathroom and there was this drunk girl on in a fit, because she had hurt her toe and blablabla…then she put up a racket in the hallway, where the staff managed to get her to go to the hospital to have it checked out. But that really was the last straw, I wasn’t staying there!! I went down to the reception, to ask them if they had another room to move to. But all they had was a more expensive twin room with it’s own bathroom, on the other side of the building, or some earplugs….
I had already found a cheaper hotel, so I booked that, put most of my stuff back into my suitcase and tried to get some sleep.
I was up early on Thursday, because the trains started going by again early. I swear around 7am, there were at least 6 trains passing in about 10 minutes!!!! It was really bad!!
I got up early, got dressed, had breakfast and packed up the rest. I checked out of the hostel around 8:30am already, I was in a hurry to leave that place, really!! I’m going to get a refund on the nights I haven’t spend there and I asked them if they could do something about the night I did spend there, because I didn’t get any sleep at all, but there was nothing they could do about that! The guy at the desk said he was sorry, but some people heard the trains and some people didn’t…which is BS, I’m sorry, everyone hears those stupid trains, because all of them are blowing their horns!!!! There’s no way you can not hear them, I really didn’t buy that. But I didn’t care I was going to my hotel!!
Which wasn’t all that far away, but far enough away from the train tracks!!! Of course it was too early to check in yet, but I didn’t mind, I could leave my suitcase with them, so I could go to the train station.
I was supposed to take the train at 10:30am to Murdoch station, where Harry and Trudy were going to pick me up. But the train left 10 minutes later, so I was there later than we had planned. Harry and Trudy were already waiting for me and we drove to their house, which is huge!!! Harry is a masterbuilder, or was and he had built this house himself!
It was really nice to be with them, we had tea and talked about the cruise, the things I had done and seen so far. It was funny we talked in Dutch and English!! We had a lunch of mashed potatoes, vegetables and lamb patties..it was real food!! It was great!! Trudy said she had wanted to get us pizza’s, but than she figured I would have eaten enough of those already, so she had made this for me, I loved it!! After lunch we had talked some more and around 2:30pm we got into the car and we drove to King’s Park in Perth.
Once there we found a place to park the car and we took a walk through the park, than we got back into the car and Harry drove us around a while, for me to see how big this park is. And let me tell you it is huge!!!! Later I looked at it on a map and it is really, really big!! Around 5pm, they took me back to the hotel, where we said our goodbyes and they drove back to their house.
I checked into the hotel and got my suitcase. I got a room on the 7th floor. This was great, I got a big room, my own bathroom, free wifi ánd free breakfast!! And it was cheaper than the double room I had booked at the hostel in the first place!!! I was really tired, so I went to bed early!!
Now Friday I could have slept in, because I didn’t have any big plans for that day, but as soon as I started thinking about things, I just had to get out of bed! I got up and got dressed and went downstairs to get some breakfast. It was a buffet with eggs, sausages, white beans, tomatoes..a real English breakfast. Fortunately they also had bread and yoghurt!! It was really good. While I was having breakfast I looked at a brochure for a ferry to take me to Rottnest Island. I had already looked online, but couldn’t figure out their concession regulations. But the concessions were also for YHA members. So as soon as I was done with breakfast I went online again to book tickets. You could choose the time you wanted to go there and come back. Now for Saturday I could go there from Perth, but I couldn’t come back. So I checked if they had anything left if I departed from Fremantle and there were tickets left, so I booked that one. Later I found out the trip by boat was an hour shorter from Fremantle, so that sounded really good!!! So I was covered for Saturday.
For this Friday I wanted to go into Fremantle, so I took the train there. It only took about half an hour to get there, that was really good! Fremantle had a pretty big harbor, I saw a Cruiseship there and several containerships like we have in Rotterdam.
There was a hop on hop off tram driving around, so I checked what time it would be at stop number 1 and waited for it to come. It was supposed to be there around 12:15pm, but around 12:30pm, it still wasn’t there. I walked over to the visitors center to ask some one about it and they called the driver, who said he would be right there. The lady gave me some candy to make the waiting more enjoyable!!! As I walked back to the stop, the tram came right away. I got on and stayed on for the entire trip, which I think took longer than it was supposed to take!! The driver was from Scotland, he had been in Australia for a while now, but he hadn’t lost his accent! We drove by the maritime museum, the fremantle prison, we saw the markets and the harbor where all of the nice boats were. Including an old Dutch ship, het Duyvken.
I got off at the main stop and walked over to the Fremantle markets. There were a lot of stalls with all kinds of things to sell. I found one where I bought some cheap postcards! Than I went to sit down with something to drink and a vanilla slice at a bakery house.(but again the one I had in Brisbane is still the best!) I decided I wanted to go to the Maritime museum, because they had an exhibition of DaVinci’s inventions, but while walking there I got side tracked by a secondhand bookstore!!!
By the time I got to the museum it was 4:30pm, while the museum would close at 5pm. There was another lady who wanted to go and she wanted to buy a ticket…but the guy behind the desk said it would be a waste to buy a ticket when they were only going to be open for another 30 minutes, so he let her go in without buying a ticket…so I looked at him and asked him if he was sure…he said yeah, he was just talking to his co-workersm he didn’t see a thing…so I ran over to the exhibition!!! Hahah
It was great!!!! Most of the things DaVinci’s had thought about had something to do with warfare, especially when he was working for Lorenzo De Medici and lifting heavy things. At the exhibition there were little replica’s of the idea’s he had put into writing, like a submarine, bridges, lever’s to lift heavy poles, a bicycle and an aeroplane…it was amazing what this man had in his mind. And there were also some of his paintings, so he was a very creative person, he must have gotten tired of thinking, it must have been very full in his mind, all of these things he thought of screaming for attention!! I stayed there until the museum closed, thanked the guy behind the desk a million times and went back to the train station, to catch the train to Perth. I got something to eat at McDonalds and went back to the hotel.
On Saturday I had to be in Fremantle around 10am. So I got up early to have breakfast and get to the train station on time. Turned out I had walked faster than I thought, because I was already on the train of 8:45am, instead of the 9am one! When I got to Fremantle I went to the postoffice, to buy some last stamps for the last postcards I was going to send. Then I went to the E shed markets and had a look around. At 10am I was on the ferry that was going to take me to Rottnest Island.
Now of course I could’ve gotten a tour to go to this island, but I didn’t want to spend all of that money anymore and I could just go there by myself, so why would I go on a tour?!
The crossing to the island was a rough one, halfway through I had to take a pill and I practically ran off of the ferry to get to shore! When we got there, we landed in Thompson Bay, where I went to the Visitors center to sit down for a while, preferably in the shade…but there were no benches in the shade and it was really busy inside the center and outside by the toilets….I was not amused! So finally I stood in line at the center to talk to someone about what I had wanted to do. There was a train you could get tickets for and there was a Quokka Walkm where a volunteer would take you around the island to see these animals. Which are sooo cute!! They’re mini kangaroos!! The Dutchman Willem de Vlamingh discovered this island and he thought these animals were rats, so he called it Ratt’s nest Island. But of course no tourist would come here if it were still called this way, so they changed it to Rottnest Island. And of course they are not rats either.
Anyway, turned out that the train was only going twice that day and the walk was only one walk and of course these times were overlapping…I decided to take a ticket for the train, but for some reason, my bankcard wouldn’t work again. I tried to get some money out of the atm, but that didn’t work either, I had to use my other card. When I had gotten the money from the atm, a volunteer asked me if she could help me. I told her about the train and the walk and she told me I would see the quokka’s all over the island, also it was too hot to do the walk…she was the volunteer having to do this walk and she clearly didn’t feel like doing it…after this conversation I didn’t even wánted to do that walk anymore! There was also a hop on hop off bus going around the island, so I did that instead. But before I hopped on that bus, I went to the toilet (the line had gone!) and I went to a bakery to get something to eat, I still didn’t feel all that great. And that’s where I saw my first quokka’s!! They really are everywhere!!
At 12:30pm I got on the bus and stayed on for the whole trip, which took about an hour. Then I got on again at 1:45pm and I got off the bus at the lighthouse, the next bus would be there half an hour later. But as I walked up to the lighthouse I realized there would be no time to get into the lighthouse to have a better view of the island. So I just walked up and as I walked I saw quokka’s by the side of the road, I tried to take pictures of them, but there was a bus full of tourists coming up behind me, stopping so they could take pictures as well…so I decided to just go up, take some pictures of the view and walk back down. And that’s what I did, as I walked down I stopped to take some pictures of the quokka’s. Someone had told me that they were very inquisitive and that if you give them something like grass to eat, they would come right up to you. So I had taken some grass and went up to the quokka’s…one of them ran right up to me!!! He accepted to grass, but it obviously wasn’t the right kind of grass, because he put it down as soon as I gave it to him! Haha
The poor thing almost got up to sit on my lap, I thought it was kind of weird really, it could come up to bite me since I didn’t have anything for it to eat…I felt sorry for it too, so I didn’t stay there long.
After walking along for a couple of minutes I saw some more quokka’s and someone gave them some green leaves from the tree they were sitting under and they really liked that, so that’s what I should have given the others!! They were really cute!! Really look like mini kangaroos, small face, small ears, small feet, really cute!
Than I had to wait for the bus, it was late, so I could have spend some more time with the quokka’s. I hopped on and went back to Thompson Bay, where I stepped into the cathedral to light some candles and I had something to eat at the bakery again. Around 4pm I went to the ferry that was going to take me back to Perth. I was early so I could get a nice seat on the back of the boat outside, for the fresh air and to be able to keep my eyes on the horizon. This time the crossing went okay, for me that is. The sea was rougher than on our way out, the boat was really going back and forth and there was some spray coming in every now and then. Which wasn’t all that bad…but then there was a big dose of water coming in, the people in front of me got really wet!!! It was hilarious, I stayed dry!! Haha
In Fremantle I took the train back to Perth and got something to eat at a Chinese restaurant in the street opposite the hotel.
I had the feeling I didn’t get to see as much of the island as I would have liked to see, so next time I’m going there I will rent a bike, so I will be able to spend time as I like and see as many quokka’s as I want!!
Sunday was my last day in Perth and I didn’t feel like doing anything really. I slept in and took my time at eating breakfast. Then I checked in for my flight back to Amsterdam. My flight to HongKong was around 7:30am, so early again! There was a shuttle to go to the airport, but it would be there around 6:30am, which would be too late for me. So I checked online to see if the bus would be going that early, taking a taxi is a pretty expensive option. Fortunately there was a bus going there that early, so when I went outside I checked to see where the busstop was. Turned out it was in the street right behind the hotel, no more then 5 minutes away!!
Then I just walked around, looked around in some shops, took some pictures and I had lunch at the Coffee Club. In Darwin I had some lunch there as well and this time I had to same things to eat, but they didn’t taste the same at all!!! The sandwiches I had in Darwin tasted a lot better!
Around 3:30pm I was done walking around and I went back to the hotel, to write and start packing. Later I went out for a walk and to get something to eat, I went to bed early..
But in the middle of the night I had to call reception to ask them if they could turn off the music that was playing in the hallway. Normally it would be turned off around 10pm, but this time they had forgotten…of course!
My alarm went off at 4am, I took a shower, got dressed and packed up the last of my stuff. Took a couple of looks around the room to make sure I had everything and I went downstairs to check out. I went to the busstop and I was there too early of course! Haha Someone thought I had missed the bus!haha But no I was there waiting for my bus, but I was there way too early! Good thing it was nice and warm outside. There were a couple of raindrops, but nothing serious. The busdriver was a nice guy, really appreciated my coins for the busfare, thought he would!
I was at the airport at 5:30am, where I dropped off my suitcase. I went through security and all, thinking I would get something to drink at the gate…but no, all of the restaurants were before you went through security, here at the gate was nothing. Only a taxfree store and they didn’t sell any tea or anything. Fortunately I had brought an empty bottle, so I could get some water and I had brought a muffin for breakfast. At least they had comfortable couches!!!
Then around 6:30 am the skies dropped all of their water on Perth at one stroke!!! Good lord, you couldn’t see a thing for at least 10 minutes! So all of the flights were delayed, they were all waiting for the storm to pass and then when they all did go, it got really busy at the runway. So instead of leaving 7:30am, I think we left around 8am, so it wasn’t all that bad.
It didn’t affect us in the least though, we got to HongKong at the appointed time. The plane was almost empty by the way! That may have helped too, there weren’t that many people to get onto the plane, so we were able to leave quickly.
I had a seat way in the back of the plane and the two seats beside me were empty, the whole row of seats in front of me were empty and there were a lot more empty seats around. I could go and sit somewhere else if I wanted to, since it was near the galley, but it didn’t bother me, I was fine right there!
I watched The Intern with Robert de Niro and Ricki and the Flash with Merryl Streep, which wasn’t all that good. It was great to have those empty seats beside me, I could put my feet up and get some sleep!
In HongKong I had to wait 9 hours to get my flight to Amsterdam, which is less than 15, but it is still a long wait! So when we got there I walked over to the Plaza Premium Lounge and asked them if they had a room with a bed available and they had! So I took one for 3 hours, slept for a couple of hours and I took a shower there. Then I had another hour to spend in the lounge, where I had something to eat and I could write. But no one checked the times or anything, so instead of leaving around 8pm, I didn’t leave until 9:30pm. And I could have and should have stayed longer, because I mixed up the boarding times…anyway, I had to wait until 11:45pm. Didn’t know which gate I had to go to until an hour before boarding and then the boarding took forever. They didn’t let people on board according to rows, they let everyone on at the same time…
Unfortunately this time the plane was full, two guys next to me were asked to move, because a couple wanted to sit together. I had a terrible flight, it took forever, I couldn’t sleep and someone walked into my knee in the aisle and I had someone stepping on my toe, so it was actaully a pretty dangerous flight too!! I finished the movie with Merryl Streep and I watched the movei learning to drive with Ben Kingsley, it was allright.
We got back into Amsterdam Schiphol airport at 6:20am, Dutch time. Of course on the other side of the airport, so we had to drive back to the gates. Then I had to walk for miles to get through customs and to get my suitcase!
I had talked to my parents to not come to the airport, it was way too early and it was going to be cold. So I got on the train to Arnhem at 7:30am and I was in Arnhem around a quarter to 9, my dad came to pick me up there, so we were back home at 9am, eating croissants and having tea!!
It is nice and cold here in the Netherlands, it was about 31 degrees on Sunday in Perth and here it was about 7 degrees, so it is a nice big difference!! Haha
This was my last story for my Australia Adventure!!! Thank you all for reading my stories, for all of your feedback!! I’m very glad I went there, I had a great time and I will certainly go back there when I get the chance, because there are still things I haven’t seen yet!!
Thank you!!!
Love
Linda
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
