I’ve been treated like a guest quite a lot
since arriving in Perth, so it feels great to know the place well enough to be
a host for a while. On Wednesday, my friend Amy (known to all by her surname,
Gardner) arrived in Perth from Melbourne for a five-day mini-holiday. I met
Gards in my Freshers’ Week, where she was one of the Crew responsible for my
halls; for those non-Bath people, Freshers’ Crew are volunteers in the year
above you who are supposed to answer any questions and generally help you
settle into the university in your first week, but everyone knows they do it to
(a) party like a first year for two years running for free and (b) corrupt you
to the best of their ability. Gardner definitely achieved this and I have vague
memories of us bonding over drinking games (which I always seemed to lose) and
peeing in the same Portaloo cubicle. That, folks, is how you make friends for
life. She lives in Taunton, Somerset and her Shiteshirt-themed birthday party in
the grounds of her house (complete with jukebox, camping and Slip ‘n’ Slide)
was one of the best weekends I had last summer. She graduated from Bath back in
June and is spending this year getting some PE teaching experience at a private
school over in Melbourne. Australian kids are on summer holiday at the moment,
which means the jammy cow gets three months off; over Christmas and New Year,
she saw pretty much the whole of the east coast and “the middle”, leaving only
WA to explore.
I finished work after lunch on Wednesday
and headed into the city to meet her off her bus from the airport. We caught up
over lunch at Taka’s, my favourite, dirt-cheap Japanese restaurant, and I gave
her a little tour of the city centre. With us both being country girls, we’re
definitely a little out of our comfort zone in big cities and it sounds like
Melbourne is a lot bigger than Perth. We established early that being on
holiday equals eating as much as possible, so we stopped by the best homemade
Gelato (Honey malt and Rum and Raisin = to die for) before catching the train
back to my place. She was pretty knackered from her flight, so we spent the
afternoon crashed on the sofa in front of the Australian Open. Candice arrived
in the evening (she was staying with us for a few days before picking up Chris’
Dad Shaun from the airport), armed with beers and KitKats, so we had a nice
girly evening and got an early night.
I had to work on Thursday, so Amy spent the
day exploring Fremantle, where her Dad apparently has his name enscribed
somewhere after coming over from England on the boats years ago and had sent
her on a mission to find it. We met up in the city for a very cheap sushi lunch
and so I could examine all the nice things Amy had bought in Freo. From there,
it was straight to the WACA for our first taste of live cricket: Perth
Scorchers vs Adelaide Strikers in the T20 Big Bash. Unfortunately, we did
discover one piece of very, very bad news: The WACA doesn’t sell cider. I know.
For two West Country girls, this was an enormous blow and I’m unsure how I’ll
survive an entire day there next week for the One Day International on beer
alone; gross. We did our best to get over this, found our seats up in the
stands and settled in for an exciting match. The Big Bash is such a party
atmosphere; everyone was drunk, there was music playing and fire shot out of
cannons whenever the scorchers scored a boundary. The Scorchers batted first
and scored 203; T20 is so much more exciting because the batsmen don’t care
about staying in and just spank it as much as they can. At half-time, we got
probably the best chips I’ve ever had for dinner, then watched Adelaide try to
chase us down. They were on 192 going into the last over, needing just 12 for
the win, so it was incredibly tense, but they ended up needing a six off the
last ball and just fell short, causing the crowd to go absolutely mental. The
Scorchers will now face Sydney Sixers in the semi-final, also at the WACA, and
I’m seriously considering going along after having such a great time!
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| All smiles (despite the lack of cider) |
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| Mexican wave! |
We hopped on a very crowded bus back into
the city for the ciders we’d been deprived of all afternoon. Somehow, we wound
up back at Carnegie’s, the Irish bar I got incredibly drunk at with James and
Lauren before Christmas, which had a karaoke night on. We met a whole wealth of
bizarre and mostly intoxicated people and had a laugh watching some of them
murder various disco classics. At the station with time to kill, we FaceTimed
some friends in Bath, who had their revision period brightened up by our
antics. Feeling quite drunk and with my mind occupied by the thought of work
the next day, we got the train home and collapsed in bed.
On Friday morning, I went to work to submit
my literature review (I somehow finished the draft, yippee!) and brought my
bike home before Amy was even awake. We spent the day on Cottesloe working on
our tans, perving on lifeguards and eating brunch at gorgeous Italian café Il
Lido, then went home to say goodbye to Candice and get ready for an afternoon
in Midland. As the name suggests, Midland is far away from the sea and pretty
nondescript, therefore “Midlandia” festival was in place to draw more people to
the area. I’d seen the advert on Facebook and only really wanted to go because
chilled-out guitar genius Dustin Tebbutt was playing, but it turned out to be pretty
fun. After an hour on the train and another 30 minutes navigating the streets
to the venue, we found Midlandia to be kitted out with turf, cute little deck
chairs, plenty of local food and retail stalls and, most importantly, a bar
that stocked Rekorderlig. We spent the afternoon cememted to our deck chairs,
only rising for hydration, to purchase an amazing dinner of paella and ice
cream or to explore the stalls. Once we’d endured the rubbish support acts
(including some douchebag making “atmospheric dance music” on a loop pedal,
which was completely out of place at a relaxed afternoon gig and large women
wobbling their stuff in the name of burlesque), Dustin Tebbutt finally took to
the stage and, as I expected, he was great. I thought he was much more famous
in Australia and was surprised to see so few people there, considering it was a
free gig, but that made it even better.
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| Paella |
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| Check out Dustin Tebbutt here |
It was 9:30 by this time, so we pretty much
sleepwalked back to the station and tried our best to fall asleep on the train
home despite the bunch of token old, drunk aboriginal people making trouble
that you seem to encounter every time you ride public transport here.
Nightmare. A girl came up to a horizontal Amy to wake her up in case she missed
her stop and was very sweetly embarrassed when I told her she was with me and
not passed out on her own; we got off at the right stop against all odds. We
retired to bed for a big sleep before Amy’s last full day on Saturday.
Saturday morning brought a lie in, followed
by a trip to the supermarket for supplies; to thank me for letting her stay,
Amy cooked us the most incredible pancakes and we ate them with a cuppa in
front of Sex and the City. This perfectly lazy morning was followed by another
afternoon on the beach; it was a scorcher, around 36 degrees, and there’s
nothing better than cooling off in the ocean and returning to your sunbathing
spot to bake. It finally started to cool off at 5:30, so we went back home to
get ready to go out.
We took the train to Fremantle because Amy
thought she might have missed a few bits when she came on her own a few days
ago, not that I needed an excuse to go there; it’s pretty much my favourite
place ever. The whole town was buzzing and we browsed a few of the shops that
were open late and soaked up the atmosphere at the Old Shanghai, this amazing
Asian restaurant where you can eat from any of the numerous stalls for under
ten bucks. It’s true that Australia is incredibly expensive, but if you know
the right places it can be delicious and cheap to eat out! From the centre of
town, we headed out to to the jetty for our Little Creatures fix. It’s
official: Little Creatures Brewery is the best place on earth and anyone in the
general vicinity of WA should go there. We ordered drinks, poured directly from
the two-storey high vats that sit behind the bar, and slid into a comfy leather
booth under the fairy lights. We’re both missing home a little and we
reminisced about Bath times, which actually made me really content rather than
pining for home. After Creatures, we stopped for a compulsory ice cream (we
realised that we’d had cider and ice cream every day of Amy’s visit); pralines
and cream for me and some kind of gorgeous-looking sundae for Gardner.
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| Happy Gards |
After a short walk around the twinkling
harbour, we strolled back to the station, stumbling upon a food market on the
way and wishing we had an extra stomach to fill with the local fare on offer.
That’s the thing I love about Freo: There’s always something going on.
Unfortunately, Amy got me addicted to this game on her phone, causing us to get
distracted and miss our train stop. We ended up in Swanbourne, where we had to
wait half an hour for a train back; as I told the story of me missing my
transfer stop and ending up in Warminster on my first journey back home from
Bath in first year and Amy shared her falling-asleep-on-buses habit, we
realised that this was pretty average behaviour for both of us.
It’s now lunchtime on Sunday and, as
quickly as she appeared, Gardner has vanished from my life again. I accompanied
her into the city to catch her return bus this morning, before returning home
and undertaking a very exciting morning of laundry and cleaning ahead of next
week’s house inspection. The cricket on TV made all of this slightly more
bearable, partly because England are definitely getting their act together but
more due to the fact that I will be at the next match. I have two days at work,
including my first meeting with Lindy since she went on holiday six weeks ago,
before Nick gets here from Sydney and I can play host all over again. Happy
days!
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