Day 15 & 16 Monday & Tuesday 03 & 04 August 2026
Currently in Perth doing the touristy stuff. The good news is that I am staying in a decent hotel with good wifi and as importantly a decent bar (although not all plain sailing here as my laptop is continuing to give me grief, but I battle on uncomplaining as you would expect). I even popped in to a J B HiFi today to price a new laptop.
Perth seems to be a nice city but not many bars, pubs etc in the CBD, possibly these are out in the burbs or down at Freo. If Melbourne has a problem with homeless people well Perth can certainly match it.
Yesterday I drove from Hyden (home of Wave Rock) to Perth, through seemingly miles of endless fields of canola (rapeseed).
I drove past a turn off to a place called Lake Grace. I happen to know that Lake Grace is named after Grace Busselton, who dramatically rescued my Great Great Grandmother and my Great Grandfather from the wreck of the SS Georgette in 1876. More on this to follow, when I get to the site of the shipwreck.
I walked about 10,000 steps today visiting the WA State Museum and the Perth Mint, previously known as the Royal Perth Mint, bloody republicans.
The museum was interesting and had a couple of displays with come connection to my family. In the military section they had a display on the 2nd Independent Co in WW2. This unit was raised in WA and sent to Timor as part of Sparrow Force. After the Japanese occupied Timor my father who was also part of Sparrow Force escaped the clutches of the Japanese and joined up with the Independent Co and remained on Japanese occupied Timor for a further 10 months.
The other connection is through the SS Georgette, mentioned above. There is a little display on the Georgette's pursuit of an American whaling boat that had picked up some escaped Irish Fenian convicts and was taking them back to the US. The Georgette was dragooned into pursuing the American ship and even fired a shot from its 5 pounder gun. The chase was unsuccessful and the dastardly Irish rebels made their getaway.
Later today I visited the Perth Mint and did the tour. Very interesting, lots of gold, of course, and lots of people keeping an eye on the tourists on the tour. The most interesting bit was where the young tour guide kitted up in all the safety gear did a gold pour of liquid gold to create a gold ingot.
And I managed not to get thrown out of either of these.
I know that I haven't been able to post photos over the last few days so today I will include a range of pics from my travelling adventures.
Super pit photos below.
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