Australia - take 2

This is one massive post, but if I don't do it now, it won't ever get done!

Thomas and I went to Perth the last week in October. Thomas for work, I went for a "holiday"!

We got cheaper plane tickets by taking the craziest route ever - Las Vegas (which is still 6 or so hours from home) to LA to Tokyo to Singapore to Perth. Holy travel Batman, it was long. But now I can say we've been a few other places right?

Here's the coast line of Japan.

We were shocked at how green and agricultural it all looked! I thought Japan was just people, people, people.

English is no longer the first language on things!

Swine flu? Hand foot and mouth? Mad Cow? I'm not sure which disease this poster was depicting but it was pretty funny.

Vending machines that looked like they were from the future.

Green Tea Kit Kats! If they weren't $12 I might have bought one...

Sometimes it was a little weird to be the minority. This is our gate- can you tell where we are going?! I hope it's to Singapore :)

I didn't get any pictures in Singapore. We weren't there too long. They did have a koi pond and a butterfly garden though inside of the airport. Say what?

We were then FINALLY on our way to Australia. As we got closer to Perth I spotted this island off the coast. I knew it was Rottnest Island which we had plans to visit our last day of the trip. It's a pretty sweet view and got me excited to go.

We got to out hotel at 7am, changed, found a bus to church, and were in Sacrament meeting by 10am! It was so fun to go to church there because let's be honest, there accents are AMAZING. The church was right next to the Perth temple (which, of course, closed for cleaning the day before we got there. This happened in Sydney last time we came too!).

That evening we took a site-seeing cruise along the Swan river. It's a big river too! Here's downtown Perth.

We stayed at the Pan Pacific which is the second building from the right (it's long and shorter).

Monday morning Thomas had to work and I took a ferry down the river to the port city of Frematle. I took a really cool tour of a convict-built prison (a huge post of that tour/prison is on the other blog and you can find the post here). 

On the ferry I spotted window washers on this tall building. Can you see them? Not my dream job...

These huge cargo ships were in the port and the tour guide teased that they send all their scrap metal to China and it comes back as cars and washers. This picture does not do the size justice. Those containers are semi trailer-sized. For someone who doesn't live anywhere near the ocean they were amazing and beautiful.

Some pretty war memorial.

Lunch in Freo. Australia is SO culturally rich. There are so many Asian people, English, Greece,and Italian immigrants. You'd be surprised how many Asian people there are... it's so close to Asia and lots and lots live there. The food is the best! Sushi, Thai, Vietnamese... they were all so good and authentic. The seafood was phenomenal and we had amazing Greek and Italian food. The local prawn was outstanding and I even tried raw oysters on the half-shell. They were... slippery. Just eating out all of the time and not having to deal with the mess was amazing. The ice cream is also way creamier and richer than ours. Mmmm. The only draw back to the food was the price. Perth is SO expensive. More on why later...

The next morning I took a double-decker bus tour of the city. It was really fun and the history and commentary was worth the price. Here's the city from Kings Garden.

This was a poster telling the concerts that were coming to town. I thought it was funny to see what was popular - Elton John, Match Box 20, J-Lo, the Wiggles...

While on the bus tour we went on a bigger highway and it was SO weird to drive next to cars but not see the driver (since I was higher than they were on top of the bus I looked down on the left side of the car but there was no one driving there!).

The camera didn't capture it very well, but do you see... no driver there, just junk on his seat! Phantom cars.

I stopped at the Perth Mint to see a gold pouring demo and to learn a bit about gold mining in this part of Australia.  Perth is super expensive (the most expensive city in Australia and more expensive than London and Paris!) because of gold mining. The mining industry boomed in the 2000's making Perth rich. The city's minimum wage is $16 an hour. Because they are rich, everything is expensive... (I'm not sure why it works like that but it does here too. The rich cities are where rich people live and things cost a lot). Lots and lots of people have been moving to Perth to enjoy the good economy and so house and land prices have sky-rocketed as more and more people have poured in.

Australia is the #3 gold producing country in the world (South Africa is #1, US #2). They have found the first through 26th largest gold nuggets in Australia. The Perth Mint was built when Australia was still an English colony so that they cold make money their with the gold and then send it to England. Prospecting was awful in Western Australia and lots of people died from lack of water. They didn't pan the gold because there was no water, they just sifted it from sand using the wind (how awful does that sound!).

Here's a little gold miner's camp reconstruction:

Cooler for food (wind cooled...)

I saw a live gold pouring demonstration where they pour glowing molten gold into a mold and made a gold bar (worth like 2.7 million dollars or something) but I couldn't take any pictures for security reasons. It was really cool though. I bought a beautiful gold reindeer Christmas ornament from the gift shop as my souvenir.

I went to the grocery store to poke around and stopped and got a lamington on the way. It's chocolate and coconut covered sponge cake (Australia's own!) and it was so good.

We tried to eat at an Egyptian place but we were the only people in there and the service was so slow we ended up leaving. How many Egyptian restaurants have you been in though?! So cool!

The next day I went back to Kings Park to take a look around. It is the largest park in the world close to a major city (bigger than Central Park even). It was beautiful and had the coolest botanical gardens full of all of Australia's crazy plants.

Here's a war memorial overlooking the city and the Swan River:

Fauna and flora:

Helix tower:

Amazing Tree Walk Bridge that is just suspended in the trees -

  View from the bridge:

My favorite section of the gift shop :)

Thomas was lucky to work with some amazing people. Alan on the far left if from Provo and came to teach the training course with Thomas. Glenys and Geoff were the coordinators in Australia who set up the conference. They were wonderful, kind, fun people and we enjoyed dinner with them for 3 nights in a row. I just loved having some natives to chat and laugh with. I'm so glad we had a great connection there.

Fan-dancy conference in our fancy hotel!

After three days of teaching training Thomas and I went to stay at a house in Fremantle for out last night in Australia and his only day to really see much. My friend told me about a cool website (https://www.airbnb.com/) where people post rooms in their house that you can rent. It's a really fun idea and it was only about $100 to stay with wonderful Diane in Fremantle. It was a really fun way to travel and she lives right there so she told us all of the best restaurants and such, plus another chance to really connect with people there. I loved it!

It was Halloween, and Thomas' Birthday the night we got to her house to stay. We went out to dinner at the best Thai restaurant and got our first look at the Indian Ocean at sunset. *sigh*  Now that's a good birthday.

We got some of that yummy ice cream for dessert.

While we were eating ice cream a bum was stealing money out of the wishing well and it was SO funny. I snuck a picture of him...

The next morning we woke up early and walked to the jetty for a ferry to Rottnest Island. While waiting for the ferry we saw this fun tall ship.

The ferry took us the 12 miles out to the island where we rented bikes and snorkels and went exploring. It's a very desserty island and there is only people and drinking water in one spot near the boat harbor. We biked the 10 miles to the end of the island and it was so cool. Of course we didn't fill our bottles before we left... no drinking water all morning! I'll be honest... I'm not a good bike-rider and got off and walked up the hills some LOL. I was pretty sick of the bike riding after a few hours and was glad to be done :)  Poor Thomas and his nonathletic wife.

Ship wreck!

Beach combing. It was cool and windy when we got there in the morning but perfect to bike and comb the beach.

Creepy box...

The island is home to venomous snakes - we saw LOTS of them.

Me, bike, lighthouse. Seriously amazing and memorable.

 There are little marsupials that only live on the island called Quokkas. I was just dying to see one. We saw their poop and tracks but not them... the hopping tacks on the beach were SO cute. I wish you could see them.

These skinks are huge. Like 18 inches long and scared me to death the first time I noticed them as I was walking down a trail.

I'd like you to note that there's no harpooning here... don't even think about it.

Sea lions!

Seriously, this is an island off the coast of Australia in the Indian Ocean and I was there!! I'm still pretty excited about it if you can't tell :)

We finally made it back to the little town for lunch (I thought I might die if I had to bike anymore at this point) and then all my worries disappeared as we spied our first Quokka. Oh my heart they were so cute. I wanted to take one home for the kids but I don't think it would have gotten past customs.

A club-footed crow also joined us for lunch.

And then we went to the beach! The sun finally came our a bit and warmed things up.

These pelicans were HUGE. Like 4 feet tall when they walked on the sand.

Can you see Thomas snorkeling? I was too chicken to get in but he loved it.

The grocery store with little anti-Quokka gates.

Seashells in the sidewalks:

Old school brochures for the island at the museum:

After our ferry got back we stopped for fish and chips for dinner. Don't worry, that costs us $25 and then the little tub of "tomato sauce" (ketchup) was another $2.

Native trees:

We went back to the house and collected our things and then went to the airport to catch at 2am flight. After being on bikes all day long we were exhausted and traveling home took what felt like forever. My ankles were so swollen from all of the sitting we did! On the 12 hour flight from Tokyo to LA I never stood up once, not even to go to the bathroom! I think that's why I was so swollen...

All in all it was an awesome trip. I loved going and I loved coming home.

Thanks for letting me share it with you!