Our trip to Perth was great. The weather was perfect, the sky was blue, it was clean, not too crowded, and the food was good. We all enjoyed the trip a lot and decided that we could easily live in Perth. Heidi had two options for me: I should either find a job in Perth or we should move her and the kids to Perth, and I would commute to Jakarta during the work week.
Thanks to Kaye & Lonnie and my parents for being our tour guides. Even though you weren’t able to be there with us, we referred to your email often during the course of our trip.
We left for the airport late Thursday night (March 23rd), because our flight left just after midnight Friday morning. We opted for the Qantas flight, because it was the only direct flight between Jakarta and Perth, but we had to fly in the middle of the night. We arrived at about 5:00 am Friday morning, rented a car, and went straight to a hotel in downtown Perth so that everyone could sleep. It was strange to be driving again, and even stranger to drive on the left side of the road. Even though they drive on the same side of the road in Indonesia, it is a lot different when you are the one in the driver’s seat -- I almost crashed a couple of times on the way from the airport to the hotel, and I couldn’t seem to keep the vehicle in my lane (the white lane lines don’t mean anything in Jakarta).
On Friday after everyone got some rest, we walked around downtown Perth for a while (our hotel was on Murray street, right near the Hay street mall area), then we walked to the Perth Mint. They had a great tour, including a live demonstration of pouring a gold brick. We stopped at Miss Maud’s for dinner on the way back to the hotel, and that night Heidi stayed home to get everyone to bed early while I went to the temple. All three of our boys asked us if we were sure it was safe to drink the water from the tap in Perth. Grant made me try it first, though, to prove that it was safe.
Saturday morning we dropped Heidi off at the temple, then I took the kids to Pinaroo Memorial Cemetery to see if we could spot some kangaroos. We picked Heidi up later that morning, then drove 15 or minutes or so to the Caversham Wilderness park. It was a great zoo – we saw wombats, kangaroos, koalas, a Tasmanian devil, flying foxes, turtles, lizards, etc. Nash, Grant, Luke, and I went on a camel ride, too. On the way out we stopped at the snack shop and got some ice cream, where we tried our first peppermint Magnum – a flavor they don’t have in Indonesia. We went to King’s Park that afternoon, too, and enjoyed walking around, including the mini-tree top walk and the DNA tower (Mallory is fascinated by stairs, and even climbed to the top of the tower, with me holding onto one of her hands) . I cannot tell you what we would give for a park like that in Jakarta. The boys and Mallory loved the opportunity to walk around freely, to play at the playground, and to just see the green open space. It seemed that half of Perth was at the park – playing cricket, football, having a BBQ, or just taking a walk.
Sunday morning we went to church at the Dianella ward right near the temple and met several people who know the Nally’s. We picked up some food for lunch and drove to King’s Park again and spent the afternoon outside.
On Monday morning we drove to Fremantle to the boat dock and took a 45 minute ferry ride to Rottnest Island. We had reservations for 2 nights at the Rottnest Lodge in a section called the Quod, a building that is a former aboriginal prison. We took a train ride up to the top of one of the hills on the island for a tour of the Oliver Hill Gun – a WWII era gun positioned on the island to protect Perth and the Western Australian coast. On the train ride back the driver let each of the boys take a turn in the driver’s seat, which was a thrill for them. After lunch we walked 10 or 15 minutes to the Basin, a beach in a small cove with white sand and clear water. It was great to be able to walk right out into the water and to see all sorts of fish. Rottnest Island has a bunch of quokkas on it, and Mallory especially loved spotting them (quokkas are small marsupials about the size of a large cat and are only found on Rottnest and in one or two other areas of Western Australia. They walk around on their hind legs, mostly, but will sometimes hop on their back two feet like little kangaroos if they want to move quickly, but they mostly just hung out on the grass, eating and staring back at the people who were staring at them). Mallory would always walk up to them and tell them “Hi.” I don’t think any quokkas ever answered her back, though.
The next day we rented bikes and rode around a bit, then went on a boat tour in a semi-submersible boat to see the reefs and 2 shipwrecks close to the island. In addition to seeing all sorts of fish, we also saw a sting ray and a jelly fish. We rode our bikes out to a different beach in the afternoon – Little Parakeet Point, I believe -- for some more playing in the sand, swimming, and snorkeling. That night we went to see the movie “Nanny McPhee” at the small movie theatre on the island – basically an old dance hall with a bunch of canvas chairs / benches (the whole time we were on Rottnest it reminded us of summer camp). We walked back to the lodge that night in the dark and enjoyed looking at the stars & constellations – many more stars than we have seen in a long time.
Wednesday morning we took the boat back in to Fremantle, then drove down the coast a bit, stopped for lunch of fish & chips at Cicerello’s in Mandurrah, picked up some apples from the road-side stands near Donnybrook, then drove in to Pemberton to a place called Pump Hill Farm Cottages (a place highly recommended to us by a couple of people here in Jakarta). Our cottage was great – it had two bedrooms and a small kitchen & family room – with a great view overlooking a valley with fields & cow pastures. We got some food from the grocery store and made tacos for dinner, then we lit a fire in the fireplace, popped some popcorn, and watched a movie on the DVD player.
Thursday morning we went around with the farmer to feed the donkeys, cows, goats, sheep, ducks, and then after feeding the chickens, the boys got fresh eggs from the hen house and we took them back to our cottage and cooked them for breakfast. That day we drove down near Walpole to go on the Tree Top Walk in the Valley of the Giants, then we came back to Pemberton to climb the Gloucester Tree – a 60+ meter tree with two-foot spikes pounded into the side of it like ladder rungs. I wasn’t sure which of the boys I should let try climbing it, because it didn’t look exactly safe, but Luke started up the tree and Grant and Nash quickly followed, so I took off after them and by the time we realized it, we were more than half-way up the tree.
On Friday after going around to feed the animals with the farmer, we checked out of the cottage and drove back in to Perth. We stayed near downtown again, and Friday afternoon we went to a nearby shopping mall for dinner (we tried the doner kebabs), and to do some shopping for things we aren’t able to get in Jakarta. On Saturday we went to Fremantle for some more shopping (Target, Fremantle markets, E-Shed markets), lunch, and to see a few things – the Roundhouse (an old prison) and the Shipwreck Museum, with a recovered portion of the ship Batavia, which sank off the coast of Australia on its way from Europe to Jakarta (the story sounded interesting, so we bought a book about it, and Nash has read nearly half of it already).
Sunday we went to church again in Dianella, then in the afternoon we went to King’s Park (did I mention that we like that park?) and met the family of a missionary who was serving in our branch in Jakarta, but who was released last week. We had lunch, talked a while in the park, then we went to the airport. You know those flights where someone’s child cries and screams the whole time? Well, we were the family with the screaming baby last night. We think Mallory is getting a new tooth or two because she cried in pain and was inconsolable for much of the flight. I’m sure people thought we were torturing our child. Our flight landed at midnight in Jakarta, so we didn’t get everyone home and in bed until 2:00 am. Hopefully a few of these pictures fill in the rest of the story of our trip.
Millers in Shanghai
