Last day of our holiday. Met up with Tom, an old school friend, who took us on a tour of Kings Park and the Botanic Gardens. A very pleasant space, nice and cool under the trees and with great views down over the Swan River and city of Perth. In the afternoon we did a self-guided walking tour of ‘Art City’ Perth.

We did not have any internet on Rottnest Island, hence no posts for a few days.

I won’t post any photos of the wedding as Simon and Dez can decide which ones they want to go out into the public domain when they get their “official” photos from the wedding photographer.

We arrived on the island on Thursday morning and it was sunny and very hot. In the evening the weather deteriorated and overnight it rained. Wedding Day Friday started out cloudy and windy and it deteriorated during the morning until it was gale winds and heavy showers of rain. So much for a beach wedding at Fay’s Bay. The wedding planner was earning her fee as plans were revised from an exposed beach to a sheltered beach, then a sheltered verandah and finally inside in an historic cottage. Dez and Simon were fantastic, they were the most cool, calm and collected, just going with the flow while everyone else was losing their minds. The late ferries back to Freemantle were cancelled due to the weather and so some had to leave a little earlier than they wanted to. It was a lovely wedding, we all enjoyed ourselves and Dez and Simon were very happy.

Wouldn’t you know it the next day was warm and sunny although still a bit windy. All our immediate family were on Rottnest, Barbara and I, Clare and Dave and baby Andrew, Susan and Mike, in a 3 bedroom chalet at Geordies Bay and Dez and Simon in a “honeymoon” chalet about a hundred metres away in Longreach Bay.

Rottnest Island (also known as Wadjemup, and Rotto by locals) is 18 km off the coast of Freemantle WA – a 30 minute ride on the ferry. It is a sandy, low lying, limestone island, a nature reserve, and is 11km long, 4.5km at its widest and the highest point is 50 metres above sea level. There is no private ownership or leasing of land. It is administered by the Rottnest Island Authority under its own act of parliament. It has a permanent population of about 300 but 500,000 visitors a year and up to 20,000 on a busy day in summer. There are no private vehicles just a few service and emergency vehicles used by the Authority, but the roads are excellent. There is a good bus service, a one carriage train, a small landing strip and almost everyone brings their own, or hires a bicycle. It is wonderful cycling, dozens of beautiful bays and beaches, inland salt lakes, no hills of any significance, no vehicle traffic and many, many kilometres of smooth sealed roads. There are hundreds of chalets for accommodating 5,500 visitors, quite a large settlement at Thomson Bay (where the ferry jetty is) with stores, cafes, restaurants, etc. There is a good grocery store and excellent café where we stayed in Geordie Bay.

There were no inhabitants when Europeans arrived but Rottnest had been inhabited by aborigines from 6,500 to about 50,000 years ago. The island has an interesting history of salt harvesting from the salt lakes, an aboriginal prison, a reformatory for boys, an internment camp in WWI and WWII, a military installation of 9 inch and 6.2 inch guns in WWII and Battery Observation Post (BOP) and Signals Building to co-ordinate the aiming and firing of the guns. Today the island is largely devoted to recreational use with swimming, fishing, snorkelling, surfing, kayaking, sky diving, use a Skegway, tours of historic and military buildings, weddings etc.

Rottnest is known for its population of Quokkas, a small native marsupial found in few other locations. The island’s name comes from the Dutch for “Rats’ Nest Island” after the quokkas. On the way over from Freemantle to the island our ferry stopped so we could observe some humpback whales and dolphins. The whales migrate up and down the West Australia coast.

We loved our time on the island. Just enough things of interest to see and explore and it is very, very relaxed. A large part of the laid back feeling comes from there being no vehicular traffic. Everyone walks, cycles or takes the bus.

Freemantle

A relaxing day in sunny, warm – almost too warm – Freemantle , or Freo as some call it.

With Clare, Dave and Andrew we visited Freemantle Prison, Western Australia’s only World Heritage listed building. In 1850, the first of almost 10,000 male convicts arrived as a labour force to help build the Swan River Colony. Their first project was to build their own home – the Convict Establishment – later renamed Freemantle Prison. The convict era ended in 1886 and the prison became Western Australia’s maximum security gaol for men, women and children until it was decommissioned in 1991. We took a guided tour: “Convict Prison” which took an hour and a quarter and was about the time from the 1850s until 1886.

From the Prison we went to Little Creatures Brewery where we met up with Simon and Dez, Susan and Mike and Dez’s family Ruth and Craig and their seven children for a very nice lunch. Later in the day Dave and I went for a walk around Freemantle looking at the lovely old buildings and checked out the Roundhouse Precinct on the shore near Bathers Beach where a canon is fired at 1300hrs every day.

Tomorrow we all head down to the Rottnest Express Ferry to go over to Rottnest Island for the next three days.

London Heathrow to Perth

This was a big transition day, northern hemisphere to southern and half way round the world, 9009 miles, 16hrs 15mins non-stop. A cruisy start to the day, awake at usual time, casual breakfast, 5 min walk to Paddington Station, 30 min on the TFL train to Heathrow Terminal for a departure 10 minutes after noon. Qantas absolutely on time as usual. At Heathrow it takes twenty minutes of taxiing before you get to actually take off.

We had booked this flight in trepidation as it is advertised as 16 hrs 45 mins long and would be the longest flight we had ever done. However it turned out to be pretty comfortable. This was preferable to say two flights of seven or eight hours with a two or three hour stopover between. We didn’t sleep, just watched heaps of very good movies: premieres, classics, award winners, European, Australian, Hitchcock, Marvel, Harry Potter etc. Michael Cain, James Stewart, Paul Newman, and wasn’t Grace Kelly absolutely beautiful and talented.

We had pre-booked a shuttle from Perth Airport to Freemantle, about a 45 minute drive. The company, Perth City Shuttles subcontracted the service to an Uber driver so we had a very comfortable and chatty ride in a Kia Suv for just the two of us. Dave had booked our accommodation and was to be sent a code 12 hours before arrival as the apartment is often unattended. They were an hour behind us arriving in Perth and had booked their own transport. On our arrival the apartment was ready and there was a concierge who accepted our creds and gave us swipe card and key so we could check in.

Now in Freemantle in a very spacious and modern serviced apartment sharing with Clare, Dave and grandson Andrew. It has three double bedrooms, two huge ensuites, another wc, full laundry, masses of storage, large kitchen/dining/ living area, a pool, gym, spa and parking. Our ensuite alone is bigger than our room and bathroom at the Shakespeare Hotel in London. And it is amazingly cheap for the five of us. We are here two nights before getting the ferry over to Rottnest Island.

Went for a walk around the block from our hotel and found a lot of interesting places to eat.

Later this morning we head out to Heathrow for our 16 hr 45 min flight to Perth. Oh joy! Think I would swap my airline meals for any of the places above.

Oxford – The City of Dreaming Spires

Today we decided to go to Oxford, about an hour (80km) from Paddington on the train – £54.80 return for two. We also booked a walking tour with Oxford Official Walking Tours for £17.00 each. The tour didn’t start until 1.00pm so we retired to a coffee shop on the third floor of a book store (remember those!) to study our map and fill in a bit of time. We walked slightly out of town to the banks of the River Cherwell where they do the punting. It’s is also the location of the Botanic Gardens and a lot of sports grounds belonging to the colleges.

There were 18 in our tour group led by a very nice gentleman named Iain (very easy to remember – he has two eyes). He was in his sixties and a graduate in French of Jesus College. Very articulate, funny and related to and interacted with the group – mainly Americans and Canadians – very well. The tour took two hours and we walked less than a mile, Oxford is very compact. Iain was very knowledgeable and gave us the history of learning at Oxford and explained the system of Colleges and the relationship with Oxford University. However I would only rate the tour five out of ten. Their advertising said we would visit colleges and the entry fees were included in the tour price. In fact we went into only one college, Wadham where entry was free, and then we only visited their fairly ordinary chapel. We didn’t see any of the more notable college quads, chapels, dining halls or libraries. We didn’t even go near the Bridge of Sighs. So for me who was interested in the architecture it was a bit of a let-down. They don’t teach architecture at Oxford, or in fact any useful sciences. There are lots of different tour companies and we should have researched a bit more before going with the one we chose.

The name Oxford comes from the Fording of the River Thames by Oxen. It is a beautiful university city home to the University of Oxford, which was established in the 12^th century and is the oldest in the English speaking world. There are 38 independent colleges and six “dependent” ones. The six are made up of three Roman Catholic, two Anglican and one Baptist college answerable to their church hierarchies. The other thirty eight are completely independent with their own buildings, student accommodation, chapels, banquet halls, finances, traditions, rules, choose their own students, choose and employ there own tutors etc. The University of Oxford is a separate governing body that sets the curriculum and sets and marks the exams each year, also providing the largest libraries and lecture theatres. You can for example study French at any number of the colleges, and live and eat and pray in that college, but at the end you are examined by and get a degree from the University of Oxford, not your college. There is no failure rate as the student/tutor ratio is 1 : 2 or 3 and the tutor knows how you are progressing all the time. Of course competition to get into the colleges is high and the colleges also compete to attract the brightest students. Fees are about £9,500 per annum for UK and European students, £25,000 for others. The Americans thought this was very cheap.

The weather wasn’t the best, warm and often sunny but also frequent heavy showers, so lots of sheltering in doorways – because we didn’t go inside!!!!! Coming back to London the train was packed, standing room only for the hour journey. Overall an interesting day and glad we went.

After our Victorian Tea at the Victoria and Albert Museum it was off across London to the British Museum. Starting with a bequest of 71,000 objects from Sir Hans Sloane in 1753, the British Museum is now a vast complex of 78 galleries and 8 million objects spanning the history of the world’s cultures from stone age man to the 21^st century.

As usual I was as interested in the architecture as much as the contents, particularly Sir Norman Foster’s glass roof to create The Great Courtyard in the year 2000. If I visited the museum every day for the rest of my life I couldn’t absorb all that is on display. I just concentrated on a few things: the Rosetta Stone, Ancient Egypt and the Mummies, the friezes and sculptures of the Parthenon, and clocks and watches. So the photos are a bit of an eclectic mixture.

There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy the good of his labour. Ecclesiastes

This morning we went for tea at one of my all-time favourite establishments, the world’s oldest museum restaurant at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It has three beautifully designed period rooms, The Gamble, Poynter and Morris Rooms, named after their designers. These rooms date from 1868 although there was a “hideously ugly” refreshment room previous to these dating from 1856.

The Gamble Room looks like one of the richly and gaily-adorned cafes of Paris. The walls and columns are covered in colourful glazed ceramic tiles, there are embellishments of cherubs and cupids, grand mirrors, stained glass windows, carved scenes with elephants and camels and an enamelled pressed iron ceiling.

The Poynter Room has glazed ceramics on the walls mostly with a Dutch blue paint. The tiles were painted by female students attending a special porcelain class for ladies at the National Art Training School. As well as patterns of flowers fruit and peacocks, the sets of tiles on the upper walls represent the months and seasons and signs of the zodiac.

The Morris Room is circled in a plaster relief of olive boughs and a frieze of hounds chasing hares. There are signs of the zodiac and images of medieval women performing domestic tasks.  The ceiling is covered in geometric patterns and floral arabesques pricked directly into the wet plaster. The windows are of bullseye bottle glass and the wall panels a deep forest green. Hints of the organic patterns that would later make Morris famous can be seen in the undulating olive boughs that wind through the room’s plasterwork.

For the record we had Millionaire’s shortbread, Pain au Chocolat and English Breakfast tea. About 500 calories.

Some of the equipment needed by the modern traveller:

This doesn’t include the electric shaver, electric tooth brush, hair dryer, hair curler, hair straightener, electric jug if in Spain,  etc.

London

Today we were the consummate tourists and did a Hop-on Hop-off bus tour of London. There are umpteen companies running these so it is a bit of a pig in a poke which one to choose although they all do pretty much the same stuff. Eventually we chose Golden Tours because they had a stop nearest our hotel and had a “grand tour” which took in most of the popular sites. This company had four different day tours and an evening tour and your ticket is valid all day on any and all the tours and you can hop-on/hop-off at 79 different stops. We were on one of the early buses and were in the fact the first ones on, so sat upstairs in the front seats.

London traffic is of course crazy and the way these huge double decker buses get around is awesome. We reckon private cars make up only about 10% of central London traffic, all the rest are taxis, buses, bicycles, motor bikes/scooters, vans, trucks, ambulances, fire engines and police cars. Many of the cyclists seem to have a death wish, ducking and diving, taking short cuts and taking on the buses without flinching. The tour took three hours and we probably spent a quarter of that time stopped in traffic. This was okay as it gave you plenty of time to look at what was going on, buildings, parks etc.

The weather was fine and sunny generally but we had periods of heavy rain which sent everyone on the open part of the upper deck diving for shelter. We each had ear phones for a sporadic commentary and ponchos were available for when it rained. The audio was 90% classical music with just short descriptions of places and buildings, statues, parks etc. The commentary at times did seem to get out of sync with where we actually were. We didn’t hop-on or hop-off at all stayed, on the bus the whole route and got off where we got on near the hotel.

We went back to our room, had some lunch and decided to do it all again. This time at the back of the upper deck and on the opposite side of the bus. Even though this was supposed to be the same tour, in a few places we went different routes. For example in the morning we didn’t pass Westminster Abbey but did in the afternoon. Also some of the commentary we got in the morning we didn’t get in the afternoon but there was a lot of new stuff. I wonder if the descriptive bits are activated by the driver and sometimes he forgets or is just distracted, concentrating on traffic. The afternoon tour also had some heavy showers.

So we spent six hours on buses today and know some of the streets and sites of London reasonably well. At least we can see the big picture of where things are.

The photos are a bit of a random selection, a mixture from the morning and afternoon, and I haven’t bothered to caption most of them.

The best thing about today was that there was no walking. The worst thing about today was there was no walking. Our minds and our bodies are in two different spaces.