Perth ~ city of sun, fun and flowers...

I used to think Perth was a big city. That was when I was a kid. A country kid, and this was the biggest place I had ever seen.

Perth has grown and evolved enormously since then. Today, with a population of around two million (Australia's fourth-largest city) it remains the world's most isolated capital. Look at a world map to see why that's true. It's now a hub for huge industrial projects and a home of billionaires, yet still retains its down-to-earth character and sheer physical beauty.

Check out this view across Perth's Swan River from Kings Park and you'll agree.

At over 400 hectares, Kings Park & Botanic Garden (to give its full name) is the jewel in Perth's crown, and one of the world’s largest city parks. New York’s Central Park is just three quarters the size.

The September Kings Park Festival celebrates wildflowers so well that many simply refer to it as the ‘Wildflower Festival’. The month-long event includes musical and theatrical performances, gardening workshops and family events. It is a fitting celebration of the fact that this state is home to half of Australia's 25,000 plant species (many unique to this continent).

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There is room for reflection, too, at the State War Memorial where the sign under the eternal flame simply states: ‘Let silent contemplation be your offering.’

Elsewhere, 16 young Western Australians who perished on October 12th , 2002, in the Bali Bombings are commemorated in the Bali Memorial. The wall is positioned in such a way that the sun’s first rays on each anniversary fall upon the cast bronze plaque inscribed with the victims’ names.

Around seven million visitors come to Kings Park annually. The panoramic view of Perth and the Swan River is the ideal backdrop to their happy-snaps –“This is me in Perth!” they say when they post a pic on Facebook or Instagram to show their friends back home.  As capital city views go it's right up there with Sydney Harbour. Little wonder Perth came 8th in the Economist Intelligence Unit's August 2015 list of the world's most liveable cities.

Come here for a view of the city by night. Perth became known worldwide as the "City of Light"  in 1962 when city residents lit their house lights and streetlights as American astronaut John Glenn passed overhead while orbiting the earth on Friendship 7.

Just to prove this that not every view from the top is flattering, here is the foreshore, much of it reclaimed from the river over the past few decades, again being altered.

Begun in 2015, this is a big one. The 2.7ha Elizabeth Quay waterside precinct, will have a water park, an island and an eight-storey sculpture. On completion, there will be hotels, apartments, restaurants, and boardwalks alongside Perth's famous existing Belltower, the world's largest musical instrument.

This vast tract of bushland reserved as a public park in 1890, should not have been called Kings Park at all.  In 1895 Premier John Forrest planted the first tree, a Norfolk Island Pine and with admirable lack of imagination officially named it Perth Park. With Queen Victoria on the throne, it could just as easily have been called Queens Park, but it was not until 1901 that it was renamed Kings Park in honour of King George VII’s accession to the throne.

Near to this indoor-outdoor cafe (above) and Fraser’s Restaurant, Aspects Gift Shop is the sort of place every main tourist attraction should have. Its range of high-class gifts and souvenirs turns it into an airy light-filled gallery where beautiful local and interstate jewellery, textiles, craft and sculpture is displayed.  

It’s a place of surprises, too. First there’s the floral clock (see a corner of it above) that actually tells the correct time. More than this – did you know that every half hour, instead of chimes, you’ll hear the whip-crack call of the rufous whistler, a small thrush-like native bird?

Built on the highest point of the park in 1966, the DNA Tower is a 15 metre-high double-helix staircase with 101 steps. It was inspired by a double staircase in the Château de Blois in France, and its design resembles the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule. The paving below the DNA Tower is made with stones sent from 11 towns and 80 shires in Western Australia.

In 1961, when Dr John Beard was appointed as Director of Kings Park and Botanic Garden, he made a  decision that, as much as possible, the gardens would grow only native Western Australian plants. Today about 2,000 of Western Australia's 12,000 species of plants are displayed in the park and gardens.

Getting here is easy: take a 15-minute walk to Kings Park from Perth's centre, or hop on a free CAT bus. Pick up maps and brochures from the Visitor Information Centre, then take a free guided walk or enjoy a self guided tour.

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The 'burbs

Like any modern city, Perth's inner city suburbs are constantly 'tipping' - recreating a new mix of residents and visitors – and reinventing themselves. Subiaco was one of the first, then East Perth, Fremantle (coinciding with the America's Cup), Northbridge and, more recently, Leederville. 

You can pick any suburb 'on the rise' by the influx of cafes and galleries, apartments, boutiques and bars popping up everywhere. A walk down Leederville's Oxford Street offers dozens of places to stop and eat  - like this place Oxford Yard just a block from the busiest end, but sure to be part of the next growth in the area.

Its menu reflects the tastes of the local workers...

...residents...

...and tourists like us.

Eclectic decor doesn't hurt either, nor does the sunny outdoor side terrace.

We return later that evening for a different sort of experience. If we'd thought Leederville was jumping in the daytime, we were amazed by the vibe at night. Here we met our rickshaw driver (yes, you read that right!) a student moonlighting (and getting his exercise) pedalling specially customised trishaws on the Leederville Food Safari.

Read more about it here....

This fun excursion takes visitors on a tour of eateries along the Oxford Street strip, starting with appetisers at Malaysian restaurant Ria, mains a couple pf blocks away at pan-Asian Kitsch and finally dessert and coffee at Foam (above).

As we travelled at cycle-speed, the bright wall art and profusion of multicultural bars and eateries.....

...made us forget we were actually still in Australia! Perth, it may be, but there was certainly no sense of isolation.

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There are two ways of getting to South Perth, across the Swan River from Perth's CBD. The most common choice for drivers is via the Narrows Bridge.

However a more leisurely way is to hop on one of the many ferries and take the seven-minute journey across the river from the Barrack Street Jetty in the city. South Perth is relaxed and residential, a waterside suburb where locals cycle to their favourite cafes or jog along the waterside tracks. Parents take children to the nearby Perth Zoo established over a century ago.

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The city

The first recorded sighting, by a white man, of any part of the 12,500-kilometre coastline of the land to become Western Australia, was in 1616, by a seaman on a Dutch vessel. No one bothered, however, to form it into an Australian colony until 1829.

(Government House, St Georges Terrace, Perth)

The seat of Western Australia government is in Perth. It administers a state three and a half times as big as Texas and large enough to fit in Germany, the UK, and Japan with plenty of room to spare. After all, this place accounts for about a third of the landmass of Australia, but no one feels crowded here, for WA accommodates less than ten percent of the country's population. 

Although the history of this city spans less than two centuries, already a mix of architectural styles is evident at almost every turn.

Here 1960's now-retro architectural style of Council House is a backdrop for these recently added bronze sculptures...

....so lifelike you feel like pausing, so as not to disturb them! 

Before European colonisation, according to archaeological findings, the area had been inhabited by the hunter-gatherer Whadjuk Noongar people for over 40,000 years.

Amongst the high-rise glass and steel modern buildings, London Court is a little taste of the Britain which many of the early settlers left behind forever. Despite its distinctive mock-Tudor Elizabethan façade, it was only built in 1937.

At the first storey level, on the Hay Street end, a large clock chimes every quarter-hour, half-hour and on the hour. Four mechanised knights appear from a castle door and apparently joust with each other each time the clock chimes. At the Terrace end (above), in a window above another clock a miniature Saint George battles with the dragon.

Running between Hay Street Mall and St Georges Terrace. London Court is packed with souvenir shops, cafes and galleries and is an ideal meeting place.

Hay Street Mall is an excellent shopping strip with food courts and arcades opening off it, right in the centre of the city grid. This sculpture commemorates Percy Button, a local street entertainer from the 1920s to the 1950s. Performing somersaults and handstands, he entertained people while they waited to enter the nearby theatres.

Cricket-lovers are familiar with the WACA, the cricket ground where Test Matches have been played for decades.

However they may not have heard of Queens Gardens, a quiet and lovely escape nearby. On the site of an old brickworks, it was opened in 1899.

To mark the centenary of the State, in 1929, as a gift to the children of Western Australia, the Rotary Club of Perth presented the Perth City Council with a replica of the statue of Peter Pan which is found in London's Kensington Gardens. 

The reproduction was produced by the sculptor of the original statue, Sir George Frampton .....

An hour's drive south of Perth we discover a different world. New housing developments, canals, boats, a coastal feel...

......and dolphins, the lure that made us visit. We are warned we may not see them, but stay optimistic.

We have been booked onto a lunchtime fish and chips dolphin-sighting tour on Mandurah Cruises. We order our meal as we board at the floating wharf at Mandjar Bay We'd arrived early as directed and had a coffee at the Dome cafe nearby, overlooking the river, beforehand. The tour will be a leisurely exploration of the river, the canals and wetlands, and the weather has cooperated beautifully. 

The recorded commentary tells us that the original inhabitants, the aboriginal people, ate very well here, subsisting on fish and seafood, seeds and nuts as well as meat from animals they hunted. Their name for the area was mandjar, a meeting place.

And here we meet our lunch being brought onboard!

As we eat we cruise past the canal-front mansions, amazed at their grandeur, and also the cruisers moored at the edge of their gardens. 'Now that's the way to live!' exclaims someone.

The Peel Inlet is the ideal place to hope to see the stars of this tour, as it has long been used by the local bottlenose dolphins to herd fish into the bay.

And sure enough after much excited pointing and many gasps as the boat's passengers sight triangular black fins piercing the surface of the water in the distance, suddenly there they are, a pair of dolphins, frolicking in our bow wave. 

They escort us for over thirty minutes and it is a toss-up who enjoys it more - the dolphins or their onboard admirers.

After such a fun ride, there is only one more thing to do, and that is to finish this 'big kids' day out' with an ice cream. But it had to be a special ice cream from local Margaret River-based company, Simmo's, helpfully located right on the boardwalk. 

We chose rum and raisin, and prune and armagnac. Shared, of course!

Back in the city, just before finally leaving, we come back for some good advice at the St Georges Terrace end of London Court. Judging by the thousands of pedestrians who take a shortcut or catch a few rays with their coffees in this sunny space, not many pause to read this.

Seems we're on the right track as certainly we have not wasted our minutes (and hours and days) in this lovely city, BUT unlike the 'minute', we're planning to be back again!

More information.........

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In 2017, Sally & Gordon Hammond drove a car from Driveaway Holidays for their self-drive trip in Western Australia.

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Text & Photographs: ©Sally Hammond

Video: ©Gordon Hammond