This report resumes my account after leaving Albany, Western Australia. The Silver Whisper's stop there ended at 2:00 PM, February 11. We spent the next 24 hours at sea until reaching Fremantle at 2:00 PM the following day. We left the Southern Sea and entered the Indian Ocean.
Fremantle is Perth's port. It was reputedly a very run down and dangerous place until it was rehabilitated to make it a presentable venue for the 1987 America's Cup sailboat races. Those races were a very big deal to Australians, especially since they won the 1983 race that the Americans lost for the first time in the 132-year race's history. This time the Australians lost but I had to look it up as Fremantle glorifies the 1983 victory only. There is a replicas silver trophy in the Western Australia Maritime Museum in Fremantle. But I'm getting ahead of my story.
Michael and I had planned to walk around Fremantle, observe the historic sites and inquire into the price of train tickets to Perth for the next day as Silver Whisper would be staying overnight. However, it was very hot. I later heard that the temperatures were well above 100 degrees F. all afternoon. Since the Silver Whisper had docked near the Fremantle railway station, we revised our plans and were looking forward to riding the air-conditioned commuter train to Perth. A woman in perhaps her early fifties stopped us as we crossed the parking lot at the pier on our way to the station. She was watching the ship and the disembarking passengers. She introduced herself and asked us if we could answer a few questions about the ship and cruising in general. Always eager to meet the locals, Michael took the lead and said, "Of course."
Ann Marie, our new acquaintance with the same name as the Silver Whisper's most excellent chef , was planning to take a cruise with a girlfriend on Silver Whisper this coming October. She would be traveling from New York to Montreal, totally exotic places to her. It would be her first cruise ever. Michael answered the "three questions" everyone new to cruising always asks: "Don't you get bored?" (No, there are lots of activities.) "Don't you get seasick?" (Sometimes but not often; it depends on how rough the seas get. Most itineraries are deliberately designed for smooth sailings.) And, with an audible gasp, "Do you have to DRESS UP?" (Somewhat, you are expected to look nice for dinner. If you are terrified of formal nights, there are always alternative dining options that are more casual. It is fun, for us, to dress up occasionally. We look really good.)
Ann Marie offered to take us wherever we were headed. When we told her it was the train station a block away, she offered to take us there in her car by way of a tour of Fremantle. Since it was very hot, it seemed a good way to see something of the city as well as meet a local.
She took us to a nearby beach and the river where, incidentally, I actually saw the black swans for which the Swan River is named. We learned something of her story. Ann Marie was a recently retired teacher/librarian. The man with whom she had been living for many years, a college professor, had died recently and she was somewhat at loose ends. She had moved back to the neighborhood in Fremantle where she grew up and was living across the street from her childhood home, which she showed us. It was in a pleasant middle-class neighborhood a few blocks from the Swan River. Aside from a family trip to Europe when she was in her teens and a trip to "the eastern states" of Australia with her mother thirty years ago, she had lived her whole life in Fremantle and apparently had not traveled very far. She had been to Albany, a seven-hour drive away, and had taken an airplane to Kalgoorlie, an interior mining town in Western Australia on business; but otherwise she had been no further from Fremantle than Perth for most of her life.
Ann Marie was very excited to show her hometown to two strangers from far off, exotic America. She even offered to drive us the twelve miles to Perth. We were a little nervous at her obvious and growing excitement and insisted after an hour or so that she drop us off at the railway station. Later we realized that her excitement was harmless. She was genuinely thrilled to meet us and show us the best that she could of her town. She will probably be telling her friends stories for years about the day she was able to be tour guide to two Americans.
Experiences like this and being sheltered from the rain ata house in Rangaroa a few weeks earlier are what make travel so special for Michael and me.
At the railway station, Michael attempted to puzzle out the operating instructions for the ticket machine. He was having a difficult time getting the machine to take our credit cards until a schoolgirl waiting for the same train with her classmates took pity and assisted him. Following her demonstration and learning that our cards wouldn't work on Transperth's services, we had no further problems buying train tickets several times afterwards.
The commuter train filled with students and office workers on their way home. The weekday commute starts around 3:30 PM and more students got on at each stop. The coach was crowded but wonderfully cool. We arrived at the Perth station in about half an hour. Finding our way out of the station was complicated. We found ourselves on the second floor of a new mall. We eventually emerged at the Murray Street Mall, a several square block pedestrian zone in the business center of Perth. I stood in line at the visitor's information booth to get a map while Michael used the free municipal sponsored Wi-Fi to check some mysterious phone messages. One great characteristic of Australia and New Zealand is the prevalence of free Wi-Fi. One can always find it by looking for people with smart phones and laptops sitting or crouching in the area where the signal is strongest. I saw one woman using two phones and a laptop at once.
The visitor's information booth had a sign saying that all walking tours had been cancelled due to the high heat. The attendant recommended that we take a free air-conditioned bus to see the local sights. Perth has three free bus routes covering the central city in addition to their paid routes. One free bus goes north south in a loop, another loops east west and the third loop does a little of both going from East Perth to West Perth. They were meant for tourists but used mostly by local people. We opted for the east-west route, which went by the largest number of historical and other important sights. In forty minutes of travel, I saw a good cross section of the city of Perth. I discovered that my camera does not take good pictures from a moving vehicle.
Perth is the westernmost capital city in Australia. It is closer to Jakarta, Indonesia than to Melbourne. Perth is a city far at the end of nowhere on the southwest corner of very sparsely populated Australia. Most residents, similar to our new acquaintance Ann Marie, have never seen the rest of their country. Nevertheless, Perth is a real city. It bustles with energy. It is benefiting from the mining boom in the interior of Western Australia and there is a lot of construction in progress. Getting to and from the railway station is an example of the difficulties caused by that construction. The city is burying the railway tracks so getting around the construction is like going through a maze. Perth's architecture is a mix of old (late 1800's) and new. There is no particular style. A Victorian gem of a building may be next to a modern steel and glass tower. Undistinguished nineteen sixties style cement and glass storefronts mix with the historic and sleekly modern. Despite the very hot weather we experienced on this visit, Perth's climate is normally similar to that of San Diego, California. There are palm trees, Frangipani and other exotic plants lining the streets.
Michael wanted to show me the Northbridge district, north of the soon to be buried railroad tracks. He had spent a memorable week in Perth twenty-five years ago. Then Northbridge was the place many in Perth went for dinner each night. It had been filled with restaurants and cafes serving many types of food and he had fond memories of eating at restaurants there. We hiked over the bridge in late afternoon and strolled the streets looking for dinner possibilities. An observation we made, one that also applied in Adelaide, the last place we had sought to buy a meal, was that nowadays there are only two types of eating-places. We found a large number of fast food outlets, Asian, German, Irish, Outback themed, even Mexican and a few, very few, expensive restaurants, Italian and Chinese. Michael and I settled for a local beer at an Asian food court as we found no medium priced restaurants. Northbridge had changed but it was still there. Michael said he had feared it might be all boarded up and crime ridden after so many years. We were happy to find that it is still an interesting place. We took the train back to Fremantle and the Silver Whisper for cocktails and a late dinner. I don't know whether Australia, like the US has become a fast food nation or if my sample is skewed. I do know that Michael and I thoroughly enjoyed drinks on our veranda as the sun set and the Southern Cross rose.
The following day, Wednesday, was predicted to be another over 100-degree day. Michael and I walked to the train station early to go back to Perth before the temperature turned really hot. This time we found ourselves at the morning rush hour full of young people headed for school. We saw a few adults in business attire but mostly teenagers in school uniforms. Most of them got off the train long before we reached Perth. By nine AM Perth was already getting very warm. We had not yet decided which sights we wanted most to see. Between the bus ride the day before and the walk around Northbridge, we had seen most of the central business district.
We walked west on Murray Street past the pedestrian zone and Michael suddenly recognized the hotel we were passing as the place he had stayed twenty-five years ago. The brewpub next to it was still there too. He could not resist going in. He told the front desk clerk that she looked exactly like the clerk from so many years back. The young woman at the desk couldn't have been more than twenty one or two so it couldn't really have been her. The lobby had not visibly changed either. The manager came out of her office and said that she had worked the front desk twenty-five years ago, maybe he was remembering her. It was fun hearing them discuss ways Perth had or had not changed in a quarter century.
The north south free bus circled through Northbridge, which we had thoroughly walked Tuesday, then went down the main street from the station to the river then around King's Park, a thousand plus acre reserve along the Swan River, and looped back to the train station. Instead of riding, we walked to the river, as it was not yet blistering hot. At the riverside, we discovered another construction project. Freeway entrances and exits were being moved underground to create more land for building more skyscrapers. Construction barriers and heavy machinery temporarily masked the scenic beauty of the area. We hiked over to the ferry building and the Swan Bells. The Swan Bells are church bells in a relatively new structure that houses bells donated by London's Church of St. Martin of the Fields. The bells ring every day at one PM and are a tourist attraction. The ancient bells looked a bit strange in a modern glass tower. Australia is like that.
Nearby at the Barrack Street Jetty two ferry operators offer various tours of the Swan River. We made a last minute decision to take a ferry to Fremantle for a cool and a scenic ride. One ferry operator had no trips to Fremantle scheduled that day. See Michael's blog photo of the clerk with a winged pig over her head. That told us the likely hood of traveling with her company that day. The other operator, the ubiquitous Cook's Tours, had a ferry to Fremantle leaving in minutes. We hurried aboard. Michael and I enjoyed an hour's cruise down the Swan River with narration as we stood in a cool breeze. Wonderful.
We alighted at the ferry dock just steps from the Silver Whisper in time for us to have another late lunch aboard our ship.
Following lunch, we walked back to the train station to board the free bus touring downtown Fremantle. We drove through the historic district, through residential and shore areas and by the sailboat basin. We saw different areas than we had seen the day before with Ann Marie. Michael and I got off the bus at the Western Australia Maritime Museum. This had been highly recommended by a fellow guest, an avid sailor. He visited in the morning and was most impressed. The museum is very well done. They prominently feature the Australia II, the racing boat that won the Americas cup. It was hanging from the ceiling in an exhibit on the development of twelve meter sailing boats. I enjoyed the air conditioning and learned something of Western Australia's nautical past. It really is the back of beyond.
On the way back to the Whisper, we passed a training sailing vessel and stared at nervous sailors-in-training high up on the yardarm learning to reef the mainsails. It was a fitting end to our adventures ashore. Our day and a half in Fremantle/Perth was the longest port visit the Silver Whisper made during our 50-day voyage. I think Michael and I made the most of it. We even enjoyed watching two tour buses pull up in front of the ship half an hour after our scheduled departure. Later, hearing the tale of the tour, traffic delays on a long drive back from a ferry ride, I concluded that Michael and I had the better time exploring on our own.
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