The last Saturday of November and the sun was blazing. I had a car and Western Australia was at my feet. There was to be no pelagic but my Bransbury suggested other bird-rich sites near Perth – Rottnest Island and Yanchep National Park among them but both in the wrong direction for Stirling Ranges, which was a recommendation I had to see. Unhappily, he listed nothing on the way, a distance of about two hundred miles south-east. I seemed to be in for some solid driving.
First, though, I required better accommodation than the backpackers for my return and last couple of nights in town before flying to Adelaide. To this end I ventured out to Guildford in the eastern suburbs. I don't know: I must have thought it would be quieter and have cheaper hotels. It was also on a railway line for easy access to downtown and close to the airport for an early morning departure.
I was wrong about the hotels. What few Guildford had were way expensive. Instead I settled for a full Australian breakfast, rather similar to the sort I could have eaten in Surrey, while Frank Sinatra crooned over the café’s music system. Winter heat, brekky, ole blue eyes: life doesn't get much better.
The route south took me round the airport, so I scouted the neighbourhood for lodgings and found the old reliable standby of Formule 1. That would do; I'd book it when I had Web access. For the time the Tonkin Highway was removing me from metropolitan Perth and into paperbark groves. I wasn't sorry to leave: the city hadn’t lived up to glowing reports and assurances that, “I'd love it.” It had been pretty ordinary.
Wilder, more untamed regions beckoned. I got a much faster taste of how wild and untamed barely ten miles from the city centre. ⇐ ⇒
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