Vacation in Western Australia
Christmas 1994
by Dan and Judy Danz
During Christmas and New Year's holidays at the end of 1994, we took the
Indian
Pacific train across the Outback of Australia, from Sydney
to Perth. At the end of the
train trip, we spent nearly two weeks poking around the
southwestern edges of Australia.
Day 4 - Sunday 25 Dec 94 - Christmas Day
East Fremantle WA 
We stayed in a resort in East
Fremantle. The rooms with a view of the wide, wide Swan river have been
booked for months, so we end up with a super room just off the pool. And,
it's just a short walk or an even shorter taxi ride to the downtown area of
Fremantle, an old sailing port.
A stroll from our hotel to the
downtown area takes us past many renovated old-style buildings. In fact, the
city center is full of them - a quaint picturesque fishing port with yachts
in the harbours. We're not sure whether Challenger Harbour is named after
the 12-meter yacht that finally wrested the Americas Cup from the USA a few
years ago, or after the ship of an early explorer. We stop for a cup of
cappuccino overlooking the Indian Ocean, the first time either of us have
seen it. We agree: it looks just like any other ocean.
Fremantle has a novel approach to
parking meters. There are none. You buy a time-stamped ticket from the
nearest ticket dispensing machine and put it on the dashboard. The same for
city-built parking lots.
 The
Esplanade is the oldest and grandest hotel in the Port of Fremantle, and
sits across a beautiful old park from the harbour. We had dinner with
several thousand people! Although we saw some hints that the traditional
Christmas family dinner was held at home, the turnout at the hotels and
motels was not too shabby.
One tradition (at least in this part
of Australia) is that each dinner guest receives a gift - all wrapped
identically. You and a friend pull on the ends of the wrapping and a small
firecracker explodes to reveal a strip of witty sayings or corny jokes, a
tiny, charm-like gift and a folded crepe-paper crown. It appears it is also
tradition to decorate the tables with strands of helium balloons. The
television showed a montage of Christmas dinners and they all looked the
same.
The food was reasonable, the
smorgasbord had plenty of selection, the service was good, and the wine
flowed freely. Still, it was kind of lonely. Even though we got to talk by
telephone to many of them, we missed family and friends very much today.
We spent the rest of the day
lounging around by the pool and basking in the sun. Judy surprised me with a
gift of high-tech kite - in effect telling me to go fly one, I guess. I've
been mesmerized by the antics of these beautiful, graceful man-made birds;
we'll find a park or beach with the right amount of wind and see if I can
even get it off the ground.
Day 5 - Monday 26 Dec 94 - Boxing Day
Boxing Day - an official holiday the
day after Christmas when stores are open and everybody has a chance to
exchange any unwanted or wrong-size gifts.
 We're
just a couple of typical tourists, walking around the Port of Fremantle,
coffee-house road, and the markets. Like many places in Australia, Fremantle
has GREAT coffee, and even better coffee
houses. We've become addicted to a daily cuppa in the afternoon.
We visited the Fremantle Crocodile Park - fascinating
place, with 1200 freshwater and saltwater crocs. The largest and oldest is
70 years old and weighs more than a tonne. One 6-year-old albino croc is so
rare he's worth $40,000. We got to watch them feed the big ones -- a whole
chook at a time, with a snack of bacon for dessert.
Day 6 - Tuesday 27 Dec 94
 We
took a day tour of this holiday island, named Rottnest (Rats Nest) by its
Dutch discoverer who mistook the marsupial inhabitants - the quokka,
a variant of the Australian wallaby -- for rats.
Seas were a bit choppy when we left
the jetty for the 25-minute passage to the island. When we got there, we
went right aboard a semi-submersible vessel for an underwater tour of the
harbour, reef, and two shipwrecks. Looking out through large underwater
portals, we watched them feed fish, and saw 4 varieties of coral growing on
the wreckage and on the natural reefs in the harbour. An optical illusion
caused by the thick glass made it seem like we were going in circles, and
Judy found that her sea legs weren't too sturdy. We'll have to replan next
year's vacation; 4 days on a clipper off the Queensland coast no longer
sounds like her idea of fun.
We saw quite a few quokka on our
tour of the island -- even stopped to feed few who had lost their fear of
humans. Rottnest Island is beautiful - a great place to visit. There are no
private vehicles allowed on the island. It's a bit touristy at the port
area, but you can rent push bikes from a Hire Bike shop with over 2,000
bicycles for hire and quickly get away from the hordes. We took the 2-hour
bus tour and saw some beautiful remote beaches and bays, some with
emerald-green water breaking over the rocks.
The name of the place is supposed to
be pronounced ROT-nest, but at least one tour guide pronounced it more like
rotten-est island.
Day 7- Wednesday 28 Dec 94
Perth WA
We poked around the northern beach
area of Perth. The night before we found a nice park and tried to make the £^%$&^
 kite
fly. 'Tain't easy, my friend. The wind coming off the ocean was gusty and
the kite is a sport/acrobatic delta-shaped kind, with twin control strings.
For a while, any control input caused it to spin in circles and then dive
straight for the ground. We both began to get the hang of it, but it got too
dark (and cold).
Perth rail transport is interesting
- four major lines that spoke out from city centre. One line goes right up
the middle of a major expressway, with train stations reachable by
footbridge. But the line is considered a failure by transportation planners.
Few people are willing to walk 500 meters from the park-and-ride lots
alongside the freeway to get to the train station in the middle, and there's
no place for the typical myriad of small convenience shops to grow around
the stations or the parking lots.
Rockingham WA
This beach/retirement town seems
symbolic of the kinds of development we saw along the Indian Ocean coast
south of Fremantle. It appears that the government releases large tracts of
beachfront or near beachfront property that are quickly gobbled up and
turned into suburbs on the dunes. Some nice-looking suburbs have developed -
in our view - too close to the water. The first decent cyclone will wipe out
whole communities.
This is also the site of a huge
granary with a loading station capable of loading 3 ocean-going grain
carriers at a time.
Collie WA
A coal mining town near nine very
rich veins of high grade coal. Some of the coal is burned locally to produce
electricity for the entire region. Three generations of miners have dug for
coal here; the early ones did it with tunnels and boring machinery, while
the youngsters of today use open cut technology. The tunnels of yesteryear
are hazards for the huge earthmovers of today. We visited the largest open
cut pit in Australia, some 200 meters deep. But it is easily dwarfed by the
open pit copper mines near Superior and Morenci in Arizona.
Day 8 - Thursday 29 Dec 94
This is a sleepy little surf beach
and wine country community about 350 km south of Perth that has suddenly
been found by yuppies as THE place to go on the weekends. Quaint homesteads
- large houses that once held several generations of one family - have been
turned into guest houses. The law of supply and demand makes a night's
lodging in Margaret River one of the most expensive of the trip. The whole
town is booked solid for the Christmas holidays.
We didn't stay at a homestead, but
at the quaint Colonial Motel, nestled in the trees. Parrots and lorikeets
woke us this morning, and the trees have many songbirds in them. Judy's got
the binoculars out, tracking the beautiful green, blue, and white parrots
who seem to come here to fill the trees like they do near our apartment -
always at dusk and at dawn. We don't see where they hide in the daytime, but
their coloring is so good that if they just stand still and keep their
mouths shut, you'd never be able to spot them among the leaves and branches
of the trees.
Jewel Cave
One of four large caves in the
limestone, this one is 43 meters deep. We walked all the way to the bottom
and then climbed stairs back to the top (huff, puff!). Some fascinating
formations of stalactites, stalagmites and even helictites.
Augusta WA
 We
visited Port Leeuwin and went to the point at Cape Leeuwin that anchors the
dividing line between the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean. Chalk up
another ocean for us.
Dining out in Margaret River
There aren't a whole lot of
standalone restaurants in Margaret River. Most are associated with a hotel,
motel or homestead. One which we visited featured waitresses in semi-formal
dress: white blouses, ankle-length black sheath ... but wait - what's that
peeking out from under the dress? Yes, it's high-heeled Doc Marten's boots,
the UK version of the lace-up Acme work boots, which have become rather
trendy in Australia. It kinda gives whole new meaning to the childhood
taunt: Yo mama wears combat boots.
Day 9 - Friday 30 Dec 94
Margaret River to Albany WA
We spent most of the day driving the
450 km through amazing forests full of gnarly old gum trees, paper trees
(whose bark flakes off), the grass trees (short trees whose top looks like a
child's version of a thatched hut) which are also called Black Boys, or Big
Black Joes (big brothers of the grass tree with trunks like palm trees).
Pemberton WA
We stopped near Pemberton and tried
to have a bit of a snooze amongst the trees but the bloody flies quickly
found us. And if it wasn't the flies, it was the magpies with their
incessant raucous dying wail. And then there's the kookaburra whose call
sounds like a laughing hyena, chattering monkeys, and Tarzan all at once. At
other times they sounded like a bunch of old ladies, partying and having a
grand time. Forget the nap!
So we motored on down to Albany, on
the south coast along the Southern Ocean. The English-settled areas all have
stuffy sounding names: Walpole, Albany, Pemberton, Augusta; while the
Aboriginal place names are much more whimsical: Manjimup, Billa Billa,
Beyonderup, Chiniup.
Albany has been touted as a beach
retreat but when our first excursion in Albany takes us through downtown to
the shores of the harbour, we both agree: the city is typical but the harbor
is ugly. A little backtracking, though, and we find the esplanade, swimming
beach, and a splendid old hotel. I thought it would be neat to check out the
lining of my eyelids while stretching out on the grass, but the offshore
winds are quite chilly. It doesn't take time to head for the hotel and few
cups of cappuccino before heading for a town in the center of the state,
halfway to Perth.
Day 10 - Saturday 31 Dec 94 - New Years
Eve
Kojonup WA
We spent the night in the center of Kojonup Shire, home of
a million sheep (or so the sign says). It's hard to tell the sheep from the
rocks and tree stumps in the middle of the golden grass fields. It's HOT
when the sun is shining, but it quickly cools off after sundown. The neatest
things in Kojonup (population 2,800) were some expertly restored petrol
pumps inside the cafe at the mixed business where we spent the night. It was
a combination petrol station, motel, sit-down restaurant, deli and
take-away, video rental, reception centre, and souvenir shop.
The traffic on Saturday morning is considerably more
congested than when we were last in Perth.
 Our
hotel room overlooks the Swan River near downtown Perth. We walked uptown,
and it's hot here too. It must be 35C (95F) with humidity in the 80+% range.
There's an occasional offshore breeze - far too occasional! However, it's
ALMOST enough to fly a kite in the park alongside the river. Most of the
time, the kite flies like a dream -- but then all of sudden, the wind quits
and the kite does a nosedive.
Perth has a nice pedestrian mall in the center of town -
with a unique idea: free transportation on all buses and trains within the
downtown free zone. The trains are electric, modern, and relatively free of
graffiti, but then they've only been running for a few years
New Year's Eve celebrations in Perth were rather subdued,
at least near the hotel. Last year, crowds in the Northbridge and Rottnest
Island area got rowdy. At Rotto, they had all of 7 police for a crowd of
8,000 holidayers. They could've had a great fireworks display over the wide
mouth of the Swan River - but apparently they reserve that for Australia
day. Too bad; we had a great view of the river from our hotel.
Day 11 - Sunday 1 Jan 95 - New Years Day
Perth - Adelaide - Sydney
We backtracked the route of our train trip - but this time
 Qantas
did the transcontinental trip at 33,000 feet, in 8 percent of the time, for
half the cost.
Author:
L. W."Dan" Danz
Fountain Hills AZ
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Copyright
1995,1996,1999,2001