I think it's a true saying that "the west coast is the best coast." I mean, being a native Californian I already knew this rule...I just didn't know it applied to other countries/continents.  

Perth. Is. Awesome. It's the most isolated capitol city in the world - closer to Jakarta than it is to the other state capitols of Australia - but it has a lot going on for such a small city (2 million people in all of Western Australia, 1.5 of them in and around Perth, if that gives you any idea).

Yes, it's dumped buckets of rain on me every single day except today (of course, my last day) and forced me to buy an umbrella, but I've had the most fun here of anywhere else so far in spite of that. And I honestly haven't gone a single day without seeing a rainbow. No, that's not a metaphor - it's true! I have dozens of pictures of rainbows now because I just couldn't believe it.

My first day here I didn't do much except walk around and finish a really cheesy novel, so I'll spare you the details. Don't read Red Dust is all I'm saying. On my second day I got up early for a wine tasting tour of the Swan Valley (think Sonoma Valley, only smaller and Australian). It was super fun: the tour guide, Claude, was a complete rascal with a really cheeky sense of humor, and within 5 minutes he was on a first-name basis with everyone and knew everyone's life story. Nearly everyone except myself and a young English couple were in their 60's at least, and by the time I joined the tour bus (I had a river cruise first) they were already quite "merry." We hit 3 wineries before lunch, by which time I was losing my gross motor function, and a fourth winery, a brewery and a truffle factory after lunch. The wineries were all small and family owned, and one of them had really great dessert wines and ports. I don't really have what you'd call a "refined" palate, but wine is wine, and I drank whatever they gave me.  The best part was when Claude cranked up the Tom Jones CD on the way back and everyone on the bus - correction, every OLD PERSON - burst into song. Getting drunk with old people is the shizzle.

The day directly after that I went on a city sights tour which went through both Perth and a small port town called Fremantle which is famous for its cappuccino strip and for its open-air weekend markets. I was able to sit at a cafe on the strip and read for a few hours there before taking another cruise up a different part of the Swan River at the end of the day. That night I bought a ticket to see a play called "Lucky Sods" at the Harbour Theatre in Fremantle, and when I got there I found out that it was basically community theatre (I should've known that's why the ticket was so cheap!). Not that there's anything wrong with community theatre - actually it was sort of cool to be amongst locals at a play put on by locals - it just wasn't what I expected. But they gave me free sherry at the door, so it's all good.  "Lucky Sods" is about this Yorkshire couple who win the lottery not once but four times, and it's a satirical look at how money can change and corrupt your life. Not much to say about it other than that really. The problem was after that when I had to walk back to the train station, and then to my hostel, in the rain...without my umbrella...grrr...

And if you thought my marathon of tours stopped there, think again! I was up early yet again yesterday for my trip out to Nambung National Park where the eerie "pinnacles" rise up out of mustard-yellow sand. Before getting there we stopped at a Benedictine monastery called New Norcia (which I found out later was where some of the "stolen generations" of Aboriginal children were taken and "educated"), a wild flower farm, and a beach called Thirsty Point in a town called Cervantes. When I booked this tour, the agent asked me if I was really sure I wanted to do it because apparently not many young people go on this tour (all the young people went to the pinnacles via a 4-wheel-drive bus tour through the sand dunes). What she meant was that I'd be stuck on a bus with a bunch of old people...but I gotta say, I like touring with senior citizens: there's always at least one person or couple (in my case three) who want to adopt you because you're by yourself. By the end of the tour I had three couples pointing stuff out to me (like I didn't know what an emu was, bless them), asking me about my plans for the rest of my trip, and generally mothering me. And when you've been alone for as long as I have, a little mothering is ok by me. It's kind of unnerving on a bus with heaps of younger people anyway - I feel like I'm on display in a freak show because I'm - GASP!! - alone. Anyway, that was the longest of my tours, getting home after 8pm, but it was really cool. 

Today, my last day in Perth, was sunny and gorgeous and I went walking along Hay Street, the major shopping center. Just off of the Hay Street mall there's a tiny entry way that goes straight through the buildings to the next parallel street called London Court. Apparently, some British ex-pats got homesick a few decades ago and decided to construct an old-fashioned London street in the middle of Perth. All I can say is, it looked exactly how I imagine Diagon Alley to be...I kept expecting to see Olivander's wand shop or something. It made me nostalgic both for Harry Potter and for England. Sigh...

Well, a week from today I fly home. But tonight, in about 15 minutes, I'm off to the airport for my red-eye flight to Melbourne, the "San Francisco" of Australia. We'll see about that!  

Well, to pick up from where I left off...where did I leave off? Oh hell...

After the laid-back day at Manly, I got up REALLY early for a Gray Line tour of the Blue Mountains. On its way west to the park it stopped off at Featherdale Wildlife Park, and we were let loos there for an hour to pet the koalas and kangaroos and whatever else we could get our hands on. Right as we stepped off the bus, a park official was standing at the entrance to the park with a BABY KANGAROO in his arms. It was so adorable!! Once inside the park, my group was ushered around from animal to animal. I petted the koala and got a photo - koala fur is coarser than I expected, kind of like wool - and fed the wallabies/wallaroos/kangaroos with feed scooped into an ice cream cone. The 'roos were very gentle and allowed me to pet them as they munched the grub out of my hand. There were dingoes and dingo puppies, a tasmanian devil which looked every inch of its name - nasty little bugger - more wombats and birds, etc. By the end of that hour I had kangaroo crap all over the bottoms of my shoes, but it was worth it for the animal cuddles.

The Blue Mountains are so called because of the oil from the peppermint gum (eucalyptus) trees that are prominent in the rain forest there. The oil as it evaporates refracts the light of the sky, causing the horizon over the park to appear very blue. The whole area is a marvel - it's not really a mountain range at all, but a 7,000 foot sandstone plateau covered in rainforest growth. My tour package allowed me to take all the 'rides' through the park, one of which was a glass-bottomed contraption that floats you from one ridge to another, passing by the Katoomba waterfall. Another ride was a train to the bottom of the canyon that, to get all the way down there, goes completely VERTICAL at points. I thought I was going to die. I wasn't alone in that sentiment, as there was a kid sitting behind me screaming, "Oh my god! I'm gonna DIE! We're all DEAD! I'm dying RIGHT NOW!! Oh my god I'm DEAD!" My sentiments exactly.  Again, it was totally worth it because at the bottom is a lovely path through the forest where I got to fill up my water bottle with pure rainforest water, hug the trees, etc. A great day.

But my long Monday doesn't end there, folks....noooooooo....the end of my tour was a ferryboat ride from Homebush station to Circular Quay (which was freezing!) and from there I went directly to the Opera House because I had a ticket to see Pericles!! It wasn't in the big venue, but in one of the small theatres underneath the concert hall. The seats of the entire place (as I found out on my tour yesterday), though fashionable, were designed in the '70s and are extremely uncomfortable. However, this did not detract too much from the performance, so I put up with it.

Let me say this about Pericles: it's not Shakespeare's best. In fact, it's not entirely Shakespeare's at all; some scholars think another playwright began it and Old Will took it upon himself to fix it. The whole thing plays like a soap opera - jumping from location to location, lots of sea-storms and amnesia, murder, incest (seriously!), hookers-with-a-heart-of-gold, love triumphant. The only thing missing was maybe an evil twin or something. Having said this, the production I saw fitted all this perfectly by taking the taiko drumming and larger-than-life kabuki styles of Japan and working the play around that context. The actors all followed the Japanese theatre etiquette, played several different roles by changing their voices and physicality, the music accompanying the performance was breathtaking, and it all worked really well. It made a play that is, at times, ludicrous, into one genuinely believable.

The day after that I said "to hell with touring!" and spent the day at Bondi (pronounced bond-eye) beach getting my feet wet, reading and shopping. Bondi is interesting because as you come into it by train, you see graffiti everywhere - some of it murals, some of it not - but as soon as you step outside the train station, it's very trendy and upscale. It was a beautiful day to be at the beach, and I very much enjoyed it. 

Yesterday I did much the same thing, only in the Botanical Gardens here in the city center.  Long story short: it's really pretty....AND FULL OF BATS!! Here I am, walking along, looking at all the pretty trees, and suddenly something in one of the trees moves. And then I notice that LOTS of these moving things are in many trees. And then one of them swoops down over my head and lands on another tree. A bloody BAT. BATS EVERYWHERE! Here they're called "flying foxes" but that doesn't make it any less creepy to suddenly realize you are surrounded on all sides by large, squirming bats. I couldn't stop staring at them for a full 20 minutes. I'd never seen bats outside of a zoo before. Anyhoo, the gardens exit right onto the Opera House grounds, so I took a tour there that evening, and then called it a day.

Today is my last day in Sydney, and I'm spending most of it at the hostel doing laundry and catching up on this type of stuff. Tomorrow I fly to Townsville in Queensland to tour the Reef for a few days, and then I fly to the west coast. I have to say that, as much as I've enjoyed my time in Sydney, I'm ready to see what the rest of Australia has to offer.