Perth

Over the course of 4 months travelling you get use to staying and sleeping in all sorts of places, some good, lots bad and some just damn right awful! However, every now and then you hit upon a place that just feels like home and you get treated like family – airport pickups, dinner on the table each night, clean towels, comfy beds, laundry service and more! With treatment like this you just don’t want to leave! But without scaring Shona’s parents too much, yep for those who hadn’t twigged we are staying with Shona’s parents, who after having moved to the other side of the world still can’t escape their daughter that easily, we won’t end up camped out on your doorstep all the time!
Having arrived in Perth a few days before Christmas it was time to kick back a bit and enjoy a true Aussie Christmas – 30+ degrees, walks on the beach in thongs… and before you have really bad images in your mind (Peter Stringfellow-eqse) thongs are flip-flops in these parts, a few tinnies by the pool and a good old BBQ… you couldn’t get further away from an ‘English’ Christmas if you tried, and going by the number of Brits here there are a lot trying! Perth is one of the most isolated cities in the world, it is over 1300 miles away from the nearest significant city! It is surrounded by nothing but sea and Australian bush, yet it is a city on the up, with business and property booming and the city slowly growing thinnly along the coast. The city centre itself is relatively small and new and has a good vibe to it, but to be fair it’s not the city that people are coming her for, it’s the lifestyle! 2 weeks of blue skies, around 30 degrees each day with a nice coastal wind that takes the edge of it, an outdoor lifestyle, a stunning coast line, surf and you soon start to see why! It does have a few down sides, the bush fires that were raging 40km away destroying houses, spiders that can kill you and flies that want to get in your nose and eyes when you go for a walk! But having been spoilt for 2 weeks and before we got too used to the comforts of home it was time to move on again but we left having recharged energy levels, restocked clothes, repacked backpacks, refuelled bellies (thanks Chris for some fantastic meals and sorry Malcolm, you can stop eating all those veggie meals now!), refreshing dips in the pool and reliving the last 4 months travels – I’ve run out of re’s so stopped there! Thank you to Shona’s parents for a lovely break and fun time, you’ll score high on the hostelbookers.com ratings and we’ll leave some positive feedback – but remember a daughter is for life not just for Christmas so with treatment like that she’ll definitely be back!!!