This is ‘The Wife’ guest authoring today as Mark is otherwise engaged (doing nothing actually). We’ve spent around an hour trying to find a cafe with wifi in the centre of Perth (avoiding McDonalds ‘cos it smells of fat food) and when we finally found somewhere, they charged us $14 for an hour. Nice. We’ve got 14 mins left, so I’ll try and be brief despite the fact that I’m Welsh and we tell LONG stories.

Well, Mark and I arrived in Perth on Sunday around 2pm local time after the longest flight in the world - well it wasn’t really but you forget how boring these types of journeys are when you haven’t done one for a while. There were some interesting people on the plane which always passes the time for me. Mark made me sit in the middle so he could look out of the window, so I was sitting next to a nice lady who was flying to Sydney. We had a very nice chat which passed the time. Hope she got over her jetlag.

Our friends Emma and Clinton picked us up and we drove back to their house in the suburbs for a brew. Several brews later and a little tour of the local neighbourhood and house, we went for a BBQ picnic at Heathcote Park which is where the wedding ceremony is going to be tomorrow. After returning to the house, we managed to stay awake until about 10.30 before passing out with extreme tiredness and Melatonin that Clinton gave us.

Monday was spent being jetlagged and finding our way around the local neighbourhood. We went to the local Mall for a mooch and tried to find wifi for Mark to connect with his beloved internet but to no avail. He was already feeling cut off from the rest of the world after not going online for a whole day but this made it worse. God knows how he’d cope if he ever went to Alaska or something. We bought some great Barramundi in the fish shop and cooked our hosts a nice meal before going out for a few beers in a pub in South Perth. We met up with someone I went to school with and her boyfriend. They work in the mining industry here in WA which was pretty interesting to hear about.

Tuesday was another jetlag day. We went into the city in the afternoon with Emma and had some GREAT sushi before separating. Mark went off to do his talk at the Melbourne Hotel with Port80 and I went to Kings Park and had dinner with Emma and Clinton. Mark’s talk seemed to go well which is good.

The last two days have been spent helping out with wedding chores and getting wedding nerves by proxy. Chores have included: picking up dresses, getting a manicure (not Mark obviously!), moving chairs, tidying up, making place settings, ironing honeymoon clothes, dropping off stuff at the venues etc etc. We’ve now left the bride and groom to pack for their honeymoon whilst we do some tourist things in the city… and look for wifi access! Whilst Mark caught up with the world, I played my own special game of ‘Spot the Pom’. My total so far is 13. Pretty good going.

So, we’ve got the wedding tomorrow which will be fun (except for the fact we’re in the house with the bride and bridesmaids all morning which will be chaotic!) and then we’re off to Rottnest Island on Saturday for some snorkeling and cycling—yay!

So, to sum up our time here so far:

Three bad things about Perth:

  1. The brews are like milky water
  2. There’s too many ants
  3. There’s too many Poms

Three good things about Perth:

  1. It’s beautiful
  2. Public transport is cheap and plentiful
  3. Even the fish and chips seems healthy here!!

Next stop, Cairns on Sunday.