Freo - 18th Oct - ? (I am still here!)

Perth, as a city is ok but is nothing special. It does not have many attractions - except Kings Park and a couple of museums. Its nightlife revolves around high end pubs full of poseurs and low end nightclubs full of tossers. The poseurs and tossers are also the same people only with more alcohol. At the end of one of my nights drinking with the English and Norwegian girls we had a kebab at 2am and watched as a fight started outside. Its the first time on this trip that I felt truly homesick!

I came down to Freemantle to escape Perth for a couple of days and ended up staying. This is partly because of the backpacker place which is much better then the one in Perth but mostly because its small enough to walk around but big enough to have an atmosphere. It is also right beside the sea so its slightly cooler than Perth and you can watch the sunset.

Markets

I managed to stay off the beer for my first night which I thought was very good as it was a Saturday. On Sunday I went to the markets which they have each weekend in Freo. It was like any other market I had been to. Some food stalls, some fruit and veg stalls and lots of stalls selling gifts, souvenirs, crafts and tat. As I already said I do not like shopping and markets to me are the apex of shit shopping. So why did I go. Simple, someone told me in Perth that they had free food samples. Unfortunately the free samples turned out to be bits of apple, pear and orange - not the cooked meat and veg I had wished for. Still I took what I could get - my budget since Perth has gone from Post coital Elephant shrink to post coital Southern Right Whale Shrink.

Sunset

I had meant to watch the sunset the first night I got here but I mistimed it and got to the seafront too late. On Sunday I mistimed it the other way and got there far too early. This meant that I ended up walking round the Harbour restaurants and marina for ages waiting for the sun to settle. I even got so bored that I tried to take a self timer photos of my newly unveiled hairy legs (the first time in public on this trip). After several attempts I just did this:

Knobbly Knees

Here are some other pics:

statue

Safety Fishing?

There are numerous signs about the 1987 Americas cup that was held in Freemantle. The following picture is part of one of the OFFICIAL signs and shows a typical Aussi response directed to the skipper of the winning USA yacht:




Eventually I got hungry and ended up going to cheapest looking restaurant for a small chip and beer - both were crap VB lager and half done chip. But it killed enough time to allow me to see the sunset. To be honest I have seen better but DM liked it:

DM - back to normal size (for the moment) enjoys the sunset


Freemantle sunset



Raymond Finn - English teacher.

After the Sunset I went back to the Backpackers to SSS before going out for a couple of pints to celebrate a within budget day. I invited along Simon who was staying in my dorm. He's a French guy staying in Australia for 4 months. His English is good but still needs work and I dutifully took on the task of teaching him (stop laughing!). We went to a very large bar called Small Creatures which turned out to be a micro brewery with all their own beer. The place was enormous and was basically built around their brewing facilities with large steel containers as a backdrop to the bar. We asked the Aussi barman what beers they had as they had no signs to say which was which. His reply was 'would you like to taste them' (bear!pope!) he then proceeded to give us large samples of each of their 4 beers to try and also explained in a very knowledgeable way about each of them. The unusual thing was for each sample he give us he himself also took a sample - I think I seen him fall over in a heap later on - obviously been doing too many samples.

We took a pint of their Bright Ale (very fruity beer - reminiscent of Timothy Taylor Landlord for you Camra people) and went outside to talk English. After another pint - this time of their very nice dark ale I started getting into the nitty gritty of the English Language:

Me: So Simon the French say 'Comment Ca Va' for how are you.
In Northen Ireland we say:'What about ye'.
Simon: 'What About vous'.
Me: What, About, Ye.
Simon: We can also just say 'Ca Va' for how are you.
Me: Ah that is the same as 'Bout ye'

We were starting to get somewhere when Simon made the mistake of trying to bum a cigarette off the Aussi next to us. After initial reluctance (cigarettes are dear afterall) he gave him one and then asked our names and where we were from.

Once he heard where we were from he was very friendly (probably because he was half-cut) and introduced himself as TROY. Then his girlfriend introduced herself - BROLWAIN (apparently her parents are Welsh). They then proceeded to take over the English Lesson:

Troy: Bas-tard,
Brolwain: As in Bastard Pommes
Simon: Bastard - ah We say B'Stard

Troy: Prick, Cock, Mother-Fucker - (you get the idea)

We were then introduced to his other friend CHUGGA and his girlfriend MEL (NORMAL NAME).

While all this was happening the bar shut (at 10 as it was Sunday) and we were at a loss for where to go next. Troy and co recommended a nightclub called Clink (i think - will check later) so off we went.

The nightclub was just like your usual basement club that you seem to get in any small town or city. Nothing special about it or the crap house/rave/pop music that was being played. Simon and I decided that as we had come this far we might as well have a couple of drinks before heading home. The one thing I will say about the place is that some of the men there seemed to take the asshole dancing to extreme (even worse than me!) by trying various bits of breakdancing and other mad gymnastics. Some of the men also seemed to have taken the macho body building to extreme. I am pretty sure I seen a Troll from a Terry Pratchett book.

My apologies to Eb and any other Australians that may be reading this. I am sure this is not your typical Aussi?