Western Austraila - Freo

Freemantle - or Freo - is really part of Perth, and is a suburb about a 20min train ride away from the CBD. We'd heard good things about Freo, and our first impressions of the town matched this. It has a cute little town centre, with more character than the CBD, with loads of individual shops selling antiques, 2nd hand stuff, and other oddities. Freo seemed more homely and less touristy.

We arrived on Sunday, when the local markets are on. Here were loads of stalls selling arts and crafts, alternative medicines, fruit & veg, and Marc's fave - Liverpool shirts. With the Liverpool v Man U game on that evening, a lucky shirt was needed...

We then wondered down to the harbour area, and caught the tail end of the "Blessing of the Fleet" festival, which included the release of banger fireworks at apparently random intervals (to scare the bejesus out of you;) There were lots of nice cafes and restaurants by the harbour, but for now we went to the maritime museum. We arrived just in time to catch the final tour of the day, where our guide explained a bit about all the ship wrecks in the area, and the stuff which had been recovered.

The hostel was a bit weird. It was a YHA hostel, which is a chain, and if you buy an international YHA card, then you get discounts off accommodation and concession prices at some attractions across Oz and NZ. However, if this is the standard YHA hostel, I'm not sure we'll be back. There was nothing drastically wrong with it, but nothing was particularly clean, amenities were basic, and as everything was made of wood, it was a bit echoey and walls were not too sound proof. And it was weird because of the clientele - there was us, Asians having dinner with French, old nomad types, people with babies, and everyone was fairly sedate and there was not much noise. A complete contrast to Perth.

We sat down for our first home cooked meal in Oz, and it seemed we were the only English speaking people (the French girl gave our pasta stir-in sauce some disapproving looks). As luck should have it, on our way out to watch the game, we found some scoucers loitering in the lobby, so arranged to meet them at the pub for the game. The time difference here is 8hrs, so it kicked off about 8pm, though Marc wishes we'd have stayed to watch the evening fireworks (more "blessing"), as the lucky shirt needs time to bed in, and unbeknown to Marc, much luck cannot be expected on the first wear ;) The 'pool lost 2-0.

The next day, we had planned to visit Rottenest Island, but as the weather was overcast we decided to hire a car and hit the road to Albany....