Freemantle and Perth

Freemantle is the port city for Perth, the capital of Western Australia. All we did in Freemantle was walk to the station to catch the train to Perth and stop in the Coles Supermarket on our return to the ship. However, our sailaway from Freemantle was another spectacular event with people lining the docks, the jetties, and every available spot on the shore to wave good-bye as QE2 sailed from Australia for the very last time. Most of the Australians were waving flags both on the shore and on the ship. There was a good-sized band playing music on the pier, including the Australian national anthem. The Aussies have a tradition of a cheer. One group of people shouts “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” and another group responds, “Oy, oy, oy.” Someone told us that it started at the Olympics at some sport, but I don’t know if that is true. Whatever the source, it is a perfect representation of what I have seen of the Australian spirit and it is great fun to listen to them do it. You may be able to see that I have fallen in love with Australians. They are relaxed, genuine, high-spirited, kind, friendly and any number of other admirable qualities. Many of them will be leaving the ship in Singapore which is closer to WA than Sydney is. I will miss them. As we sailed away, there were water cannons and a flotilla of small boats of all kinds, as well as some good-sized yachts that saw us out of the channel.

As the sun set, there were many people remaining on the open decks and the horizon did us the favor of showing us a green flash. While it was not an impressive one, it was observed by many who had never seen the green flash before. I have lost count of how many I have seen now, but this time Jerry also added one more to his count. We stayed on deck with another couple as the sky grew darker and the stars came out. The woman we were with knew astronomy and she showed us our first view of the Southern Cross, the constellation visible only from the Southern Hemisphere which functions somewhat like the North Star. She showed us how the use two fingers to measure three widths of the constellation across the sky, drop a line to the horizon and have a close approximation to the true south direction.

Now that I have covered the night, I will get back to the day. From the Freemantle train station, we boarded the inexpensive, clean, safe, prompt, quiet reliable train into the city of Perth. In Perth, there are extensive FREE bus routes, so we jumped on the Blue Cat for a quick ride to the ferry terminal. But, at the first stop, there was a Maoz Vegetarian restaurant. We were quite late in getting docked, clearance from local authorities, and off the ship, so it was almost noon and we hopped off. We first discovered this restaurant on Las Ramblas in Barcelona and then in Boynton Beach about 15 minutes from our house. (In Boynton the name is now Fala and it is in the strip mall in front of Home Depot.) The restaurants serve Belgian chips (steak fries) and falafels with pita and a huge salad bar with fresh chopped vegetables, sauces, pickles, olives. We stuffed ourselves for $10 each including a bottle of water and unlimited visits to the salad bar.


Back on the Blue Cat we rode the few stops to the pier and purchased a ticket for the ferry to South Perth and the zoo. That was also a short and inexpensive ride. A few blocks of walking and we were at the zoo. That would not have been inexpensive except that it was Wednesday and on Wednesdays adults enter for half price. We had to visit the zoo because we have not seen any of the animals typical of Australia anywhere along the way. The zoo is a modern one with authentic habitats created for the animals. We did finally see many birds, penguins, crocodiles, emus, kangaroos, koalas, wombats. In fact, many of the people who paid to go on tours did not see kangaroos because they are a bit like deer in upstate New York. The kangaroos come out at dawn and dusk so the people on the tours were told that they were at a spot where in a few hours there would be 55 kangaroos. So we saw some kangaroos with joeys taking their daytime siesta. Our dinner table companions from Perth say that you never see a kangaroo when you want to, only when you don’t want to like in the dark in front of your car. It was a very warm and humid day with full sunshine so we enjoyed ourselves at the zoo and walking around the city.

Back on the Blue Cat, we rode to the stop for the train terminal, purchased tickets, found the correct track and rode back to Freemantle in about 25 minutes. As we left the train station in Freemantle, we walked to the Coles Supermarket – the long way. We couldn’t find the entrance until we had walked three sides of the building! But then we were able to make our purchases: tonic water to go with the limes and vodka in our cabin, a pencil sharpener, pencils and erasers. I have become addicted to Sudoku in the daily USA Times we get each day onboard and wore out the one pencil I brought on the cruise.

So back to the QE2 and farewell to Australia.