Swan Valley, WA, Australia

Catching up with Ann & Bill Enright tonight (Ann’s an old school friend of Lyn, who we see very rarely) was a great way to finish off what seemed to have been a busy day. Ann & Bill live South of the Perth CBD and we rove down after our day of sightseeing and enjoyed a few drinks and a meal with them. It was great catching up and Ann’s going to spend a bit of time with us tomorrow in Freemantle.

Finally, I’ve found a Mazda dealer that is big enough to carry replacement driving lights in stock for the ute, so armed with all the broken bits and pieces and loaded up with Lyn & all the Coughlins, we headed off for Parkland Mazda. It does seem that we managed to pick a caravan park that’s on the opposite side of the world from here so we got to see some of Perth that we probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The Mazda guys were very helpful and I’ve now got a new set of Retna Burning Lights waiting to be bolted on when I get a spare minute.

From here we drove up to King’s Park. This was our destination for the day and given it covers 4 square km’s, we shouldn’t have too much trouble keeping ourselves occupied. We did find parking a bit tricky despite the hundreds of parks provided and ended up parking on the verge of the road. Hmmm, it’s busy here and it’s only Thursday. We split up here as there are different things to look at, with Merryn & Patrick going their own way and Matthew catching a bus into the city. Funny, but apparently a 14 year old isn’t interested in looking at flowers? Imagine that!

Maybe I should have gone with Matthew, there are lots of flowers here. Thousands of them in fact! Seriously though, it’s a beautiful park with a lot of native Western Australian flowers that have put on a great show on another fabulous sunny day. We walked around the gardens, which have sensational views over the city and the Swan River for a good couple of hours, snapping photos of flowers, views and the rolling green hills within the park before meeting up with the others to catch a bus into town.

No. 37 bus runs regularly from King’s Park into the CBD and we piled on board and hopped off in time to walk down to view the Bell Tower, home of the Swan Bells. This historic ring of bells was given to the people of Western Australia as part of the national Bicentennial celebrations in 1988 and includes the twelve bells of St Martin-in-the-Fields, which are recorded as being in existence from before the 14th century and recast in the 16th century by Queen Elizabeth I. The bells were again recast between 1725 and 1770 by three generations of the Rudhall family of bell founders from Gloucester in England, under the order of the Prince of Wales who was later crowned as King George II.

The Bell Tower is a hideous looking new building and we opted not to pay the visit fee but instead hop on the City Highlights double-decker bus. The Coughlins headed off for a Ferry ride and Lyn and I spent over two hours atop the bus learning about the history and memorable landmarks in Perth. Well, at least we nearly did. The recorded commentary was a little bit out of sync and when Pete Smith (the voiceover man) said over the speaker “If you look to your left, you’ll see the such’n such..” we generally hadn’t quite made it to the such n such, so missed the next bit whilst trying to crane our necks to keep up.

Armed with a new bunch of useful facts about Perth, we were offloaded again at the Bell Tower where we caught No. 37 back to the car. Another great day and although we didn’t walk too far today, I think that we’re all a bit weary. Perhaps it’s all catching up a bit?