Two Months in Perth

Wow, we have been in Perth for 2 months already! How did that go by so fast?! What a busy 2 months it has been.

A Boab Tree in Kings Park

A Kangaroo Paw, the flower of Western Australia

Other cool local spring flowers seen in Kings Park recently

A Paper Bark Tree

Any international move has a lot of new person admin attached to it. This move is no different but it feels like there is a lot more admin than any of our previous moves and also many things that need doing much sooner, e.g. getting a tax number. While we still have a few things to get to, we have managed to tick a number of things off the list over the last 2 months. In no particular order, accomplished items include:

- New Australian sim cards and phone numbers

- New bank account and bank cards

- Temporary accommodation arranged until our furniture arrives

- Convert SA and NL drivers licences to WA ones

- Arrange health insurance with a local company

- Buy a car

- Arranging the shipping of our household goods, no small task from afar with incompetent people on the other side

- Obligatory new country cold

- Register for tax, oh yay

- Plus lots of other little things in their own right or to assist with any of the above (e.g. proof of address etc).

The most exciting of the above is our brand new car!! And shiny new WA drivers licences to go with it. Fortunately we were both able to swop our SA and NL drivers licences for WA ones by simply filling in a form and paying a fee, no written or practical tests required. Give me a whoop whoop! Bron was very pleased she passed the eye test and that driving with glasses is not listed on her licence. We are still waiting for the delivery of our new car, watch this space for the big reveal when it arrives near the end of the month! In the meantime we have a loan car which has made life so much easier and opened up a whole new level of exploring.

We are also very happy with our temporary accommodation. We were lucky to find a well located and well-priced furnished 1 bedroom short term lease. It’s small but cosy and well equipped and we are happy to be here until our furniture arrives. It was really nice to unpack into a cupboard after living out of a suitcase for 2 months!

Finding long term accommodation is the next item currently receiving the most attention. Bron’s time is consumed with searching for places online and attending viewings. The leasing system works a bit different here and we are still learning our way around it. For example, one has to register in advance for a group viewing at a fixed time which is then only 15 min long and in order to lease a property, a full application form including personal references, previous leasing history and proof of income is required. It’s also a bit odd that one may negotiate the rental price; in fact it’s actually expected. We are feeling a bit overwhelmed with house hunting at the moment but we hope to be successful soon and in time for the arrival of our furniture in a few weeks.

Our cosy short term furnished 1 bedroom apartment

The past two months has also seen a great improvement in the weather. It’s like someone flicked a switch and now it is summer!  The first weeks when we arrived in August were still cool and rainy followed by a few weeks of warmer weather with still some intermittent rain. We haven’t had any real rain in about the last 4 weeks now and the temperatures have slowly been rising and are suddenly at 30°C for days at a time. By the end of August, our beautiful year round Brazilian tans had all but faded; we are pleased that we are slowly recovering a healthy golden brown glow. The days are hot and the sky cloudless and an intense blue. We are happy to be back in a place with two reliable seasons and are looking forward to a long summer of countless clear sunny days.

Apart from all the admin, we are still enjoying exploring our new city. The improving weather, a loan car and a long weekend has helped us get out and about. There have been walks in Kings Park admiring the spring flowers and on beach promenades in the Scarborough area. We returned to Fremantle one Saturday to see some things we missed the first time. We visited the Roundhouse, the cannon, walked around the art precinct, had a short visit to the prison where we will return sometime for a tour, and had lunch on the water at what is fast becoming our favourite small local brewery, Little Creatures. There are often festivals on in Freo and we are sure to return again soon.

The Freo Roundhouse

View down the street from the roundhouse

Tunnel under the roundhouse connecting the beach with the railway for ease of transporting goods arriving by ship in the old days

The old Fremantle Prison

Lunch and beer/cider at Little Creatures Brewery

We popped down to the Perth Royal Show on the Saturday of the Queen’s birthday long weekend at the end of September for some fairground fun. It is an agricultural show held every year in the spring and what a lot of fun it was for these city dwellers. Our favourites were the sheep dog trials and demonstrations, all the baby animals, pet-a-bunny, sheep shearing, wood chopping, racing and diving piglets, the photo competition expo, the monster truck demo, and of course all the traditional fair food.

Sheep dog demonstration 

Fluffy baby chicks! 

Wood chopping

Diving piglets!

Spring flowers have been popping up everywhere and we have enjoyed numerous flower spotting walks in Kings Park. Recently we also went a bit further to Araluen Botanical Garden where the drawcard is the tulips. We were a bit late in the season and missed the best of the tulips but it was still a nice day out in the Spring sun being touristy with our macro lenses. We also took a walk to the lookout point at the nearby Canning Dam and saw our first Bobtail lizard. On the way back we stopped in for our first Perth South African Shop experience! We enjoyed a delicious boerie roll and milkshake and took a piece of milktart home for later. We also stocked up on some of our SA favourites like Freshpak rooibos tea, Romany Cream biscuits, Nuttikrust biscuits, and of course biltong and dry wors.

Spring at Araluen: 

A Bobtail lizard

Canning Dam

Canning Dam wall

Justin has also been travelling a lot for work. He spent the third week after we arrived on the East Coast visiting the offices there (post with photos to follow soon) and since then has also travelled more locally around Western Australia a few times. Usually it is last minute and by plane but once was by car so Bron went along for the ride. The destination was Geraldton, 420 km North of Perth, quite a far way to go for one afternoon meeting.

On the way back from Geraldton the next day we made a quick stop at the Pinnacles in Nambung National Park. The Pinnacles are needle-like limestone formations that have withstood the harsh WA climate for thousands of years. It is quite an amazing and unusual sight, definitely worth a look in. We hope to visit here again, hopefully at a different time of day when the Pinnacles are casting long interesting shadows.

Leaning Tree near Geraldton in the shire of Greenough.

The trunks of the Red River Gum trees in this area make for good photos with their leaning trunks. They start learning due to the prevailing Southerly winds and the salt content in the air. 

The Pinnacles desert in Nambung National Park

In other news we have booked our December holiday! No points for guessing that wouldn’t take long. We will be exploring the islands of Bali and Lombok for 2 weeks over Christmas and New Year. We can’t wait!! Christmas decorations arrived in the large department stores in the first week of September already shortly followed by edible Christmas treats and have spread to more shops and been on the increase every week since. We are enjoying catching up on years of missing out on fruit mince pies but it still feels way too early! Fortunately there is no cheesy music yet.

A very happy 5^th birthday to my beautiful niece Micaela! We hope you had a wonderful day celebrating. I can’t believe you are 5 already!! It feels like yesterday when you were newborn and so tiny. Stay the sweet girl you are and stop growing already! A big hug and lots of love from Perth xxx

See you next time for photos of our fun day out to Caversham Park yesterday and the arrival of our new car!