Australia Holiday 2007 - City of Perth

 We used Swan Valley as our base and had a chance to explore the City of Perth. This is the capital of the largest state (about half of the country!), Western Australia.

The inevitable pic of the Perth Police Cruiser. Western Australia Police serve an area larger than Texas with about 5000 officers - about the same size as the Merseyside force! They are also very short of officers - if you are a British bobby (or a Garda) reading this and expressing an interest in the area then they will no doubt have your arm off.

The very impressive city centre from street level.

Cityscape captured by Emma from King's Park.

Perth has to have one of the best war memorials I have ever seen. This is located in King's Park. overlooking the City and the Swan River. This memorial is dedicated to all of the wars that Australia has fought in. Australia takes its war dead very seriously.

The roll of honour is located underneath the main memorial and allows the visitor to view the names out of the glare of the sun. The dead are listed by Regiment and Battalion. The massive numbers killed in WW1 obviously dominate the memorial - and Australia did not even introduce conscription, all of those going to the war were volunteers.

Just down from the main memorial is the Bali Bomb memorial for those killed in the terrorist attack.

Further into King's Park is the Vietnam War Memorial - it is commonly overlooked that Australia sent troops to Vietnam (along with New Zealand) and lost 520 killed. The chap on the left is using a 7.62 mm Self Loading Rifle - as I did in the RAF (being somewhat powerful they are perhaps best employed downing elephants at 500 yards!).

Adam, Sue and Emma go for a sail across the Swan with the city centre in the background.

The kind climate and lack of a formal MOT test has the unexpected side-effect of keeping proper retro-monster cars on the road for much longer. This is a Ford Fairlane (I doubt if there is a UK equivelant - this was big enough to double as an aircraft carrier) and is a real monster of a motor. Ford Cortinas, Vauxhall Chevettes (albeit badged up as Holden rather than Vauxhall) and Ford Granadas (the old squared off 1980's version so beloved by taxi firms and funeral directors) were to be seen all over the roads.

Staying on the road, we saw this sign leaving Perth. We knew that Australians are well known for their straight talking and directness but we still found this sign hysterical. Sorry.

More road related stuff. The roads were also full of proper beast HGV's: White, Western Star, MACK, Kenworth etc. Obviously, the size of the country, the cheapness of fuel and distances covered make it well worth operating at weights that UK hauliers can only dream of. Here I am outside the MACK dealership on the way into Perth (I failed to get any lorry pix - what a loser!).

Australia has relaxed gambling laws (that we are going to see soon over here when our own Super Casino opens). This is the casino in Perth - cameras are not allowed inside so this is the only photograph of it.

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