Day 50: 20231112 Sunday November 12, 2023: Fremantle and Perth, Western Australia (WA)
Breakfast was delivered to our stateroom again, which is convenient when we have an early excursion. It was nice enough to have breakfast on the balcony, but a light fleece was required because the temperature was actually below 70˚F. Our tour was spent mostly on a large tour coach driving around Perth and Fremantle. These cities completely erased any notion of these being backwater or frontier towns in Western Australia. They may have well be better compared with Miami and Fort Lauderdale for all the opulence in waterfront housing, and extremely modern and complete infrastructure with light rail connecting both city centers and the cruise ship terminal.
There were more multimillion dollar homes (like $2.5M average to over $60M mansions) than you could shake a stick at. The Swan River connects the two cities and it has many marinas housing many expensive yachts. The population also appears young with school age children and young parents everywhere as we toured the cities.
Our first stop was in Cottesloe, a beach front suburb of Perth with white sand beaches and what appeared to be a bunch of swim clubs having some sort of training event. It kind of reminded us of when our children were involved in competitive swimming at that age. But our kids never had to worry about sharks or stingers. Fortunately, although there have been a few shark attacks in these waters in the last several years, they remain pretty rare, and the stingers aren’t so much a problem in these particular waters.
Driving through the neighborhoods, it is apparent that there is a good deal of wealth in the community. Mining is still a very big business in Australia, which produces iron ore and other metal ores in large quantities. Agriculture is also a big driver of the economy, although tourism also brings in its fair share due to the beautiful beaches in Western Australia. We have seen the return of Cook Pines and Jacaranda trees to these neighborhoods, although the Jacaranda tree blossoms aren’t nearly as large here as what we saw in the suburbs of Sydney. We learned that all the Cook Pines and Jacarandas were not native species but useful and therefore widely cultivated.
The next stop was King’s Park and Botanical Gardens, situated on a hill overlooking Perth’s waterfront on the Swan River. The park is beautiful and features a lot of native species. We saw examples of Eucalyptus trees in flower and the fruits they produce, as well as trees that produce peppercorns. They look a lot like small huckleberries, but contain the hard peppercorn inside the husk of the berry exterior. There was also an impressive baobab that had been transplanted as a gift from one aboriginal tribe to another when it had to be removed for a highway project.
We were dropped off in downtown Perth where there is a large pedestrian retail district. We spent time at a nice Apple Store where we were able to update our iPhones to the latest iOS version. The store’s employees were helpful and cheerful, even though we weren’t buying anything new. They were all wearing red, instead of the dark blue we see in the US. Janet was afraid people would start asking her for help because she was wearing the same color. The ship’s internet connection has been too slow to depend on for large downloads like system updates. We were surprised to see K-Mart still thriving in Australia.
We were on our own for lunch, and although we walked past a KFC and Hungry Jacks (Aussie Burger King), they were crowded, dark and dirty. We instead opted for a chook (Aussie for grilled chicken) shop called Nando’s which we found with Yelp, and we would have to agree with the 4 star rating their chicken had. It was moist, tangy, spicy and delicious. You could order a 1/4, 1/2, or whole chickens and sides. We split a half chicken and large bowl of seasoned fries, which were very much like Red Robin fries with the Red Robin seasoning.
After lunch we walked down to the waterfront to get a closer look at the Perth Clock Tower, which is an unusual bit of architecture. It contains an antique clock mechanism that is hand wound and was part of the Queen’s collection. We learned that you can tell a Queen’s clock because the face uses Latin numerals, not Roman numerals. That is, 4 is designated as IIII instead or IV. Janet and Ben each took turns winding the clock as Janet had struck up a conversation with the clock keeper, who was more than happy to find someone to explain the clock mechanism to and take turns cranking the lever. After that demonstration, we hiked back up the hill to the Apple Store where we had been dropped off to be picked up by the bus.
The bus collected most of its passengers at the appointed time, but one couple remained missing even 10 minutes past the rendezvous time. We had to be taken down to the ferry terminal on the Swan River in Perth for a river cruise back to the cruise ship terminal in Fremantle. Ironically, Janet and I had just walked back to the bus drop off point next to the Apple Store from the ferry terminal, which was next to the clock tower.
As we stood in line at the ferry terminal, we learned that the missing couple had taken a taxi to the ferry, so our tour group was once again made whole. The ferry was filled mostly with Princess excursion passengers, although there was at least one bus load of German tourists who got mixed in, and who had taken over a small lounge at the back of the boat’s upper deck and were enjoying wine and beer. We were disappointed that this particular excursion did not include a lunch or snack as part of the price.
There were plenty more views of expensive mansions on the riverfront and marinas. There were also plenty of wind surfers and small sail boats on the water. We saw a windsurfer with a hydrofoil who delighted in making several runs at the ferry, veering away at the last moment before slamming into the side of the ferry. There were jet skis that used the ferry’s wake for jumps, and plenty of other recreational boaters having fun on the river. The ferry docked in front of the Coral Princess several hundred yards further down on the dock, but we piled back into the buses for a tour of Freemantle’s downtown to point out several museums and historical building sites before dropping us off at the ship.
We had dinner in the main restaurant and then saw vocalist/guitarist Peter Byrne in the Princess Theater, who is an Irish musician who did a tribute to Neil Diamond. He turned out to be a better comedian than the last one we had seen in the Princess Theater (Bella). He was backed by the Coral Princess band and did several popular songs that not only were made popular by Neil Diamond, but also some that he had wrote for other musicians who then made them popular.
It was a pretty full day so we retired early. We’ll be once again looking forward to a couple of sea days to recover, even though we will miss out on the Brusselton and Albany ports of call. Our next port of call will be Adelaide in South Australia.
