Friday, Oct 10 - Perth

(photos: Pacific Black Duck, Austrlian Shelduck)

Got through more dinner, drinks, movies, popped a sleeping pill for a few hour’s sleep, awoke for breakfast and finally descended into Melbourne at 10 AM, where we were told that we had missed our flight to Perth. But there were no seats on the next flight, so the ticket counter person grabbed us and jumped lines and we ran through the terminal and were the last to get onto our original flight. Especially good as there was no way to communicate to Mark if we had been delayed.

Our luggage even came through and we all reunited at Avis and picked up a Nissan 4-wheel drive Patrol which is big and comfortable and can go anywhere. Mark set off on the wrong side of the road and through several rotaries and got us to the Pension at Perth- two bungalows with metal roofs and filigree iron work that seem quite typical of Perth. Downtown Perth has several skyscrapers but the city immediately dissolves into small-town suburbs a few blocks from the centre.

Our B&B is across from Hyde Park, a large well-used park with several large ponds that seem to be filled with native birds. We got a couple hours of warm-up birding in and even got a life bird: Bush Wattlebird. We returned to the Pension to clean up and then walked to an area of Vietnamese, Indonesian and Indian restaurants where we selected the Lido Restaurant and had a very good Vietnamese dinner of tasty soup, curried goat, beef stew and stir fry chicken and seafood. Very good and a good bottle of WA wine also. Home for bed.