Perth and Kalgoorlie - First Impressions

[roo]

Hi

It's 2 am aussie time and I'm up - must be the jet lag. Arrived in Perth on Saturday afternoon, where I was picked up by my long-time Aussie mate Rebecca. We went to her boyfriend's house in Joondalup. Matt is doing his house up on his own. He's a very DIY kind of guy - a carpenter by profession. I had a shower in his very unfinished bathroom, but after a 9 hour flight from SA it was wonderful not to feel "unwashed". Wasn't feeling particularly tired, because I had manged to sleep on the plane. It was quite chilly in Perth on Saturday and Becs and I took the dog for a walk on the beach at Trigg and also tried to look for a restaurant to go for supper later.

Two of the places we went to were booked, but we managed to get a reservation at the bennion street cafe. It's a BYO, so we went to the "bottle shop" to go and get some plonk. I remembered from my last trip to Aus 6 years ago that my favourite beer was John Boag & son premium. $16.99 for six, if you please. Ok, this IS more expensive than South Africa. Bought a bottle of red wine that was on sale for $13. $30 (R180) for six beers and a bottle of wine. Allrightiethen.

Everything was very civilised, the walking path, the rehabilitated dunes, millions of signs everywhere telling you what to do and more often what NOT to do. It is all a bit of a sensual overload to a Saffer used to unbridled chaos! But I didn't find it oppressive, or overly nannystate-ish. Also nice to be on roads where people drive carefully - and one can walk down the beach not at all worried about being mugged/attacked/murdered - was a refreshing sensation.

Went to go and pick up Matt and his son Jake and headed out to the restaurant. I was hungry because I'd only had breakfast on the plane and hadn't eaten anything else that day. Food was very nice. Cost wise, 2 courses in a seafacing restaurant in North Perth came to around $40. And remember that excluded booze.

Headed back to Matt's place and we watched some of Pirates of the Carribean that was on telly. This was regularly being interrupted by *poor* quality adverts. They also have these very irritating propaganda-esque government adverts extolling the wonderful things that the government is doing. Now I accept that I am very unaccustomed to a government doing *anything* for its people, but using tax payer's money to constantly remind people how fantastic the government strikes me as unfair electioneering. "Look what a wonderful goverment we are, we've reformed your super programmes so that you get more money when you retire. Subconscious message: VOTE FOR US IN THE NEXT ELECTION!!!!" Weird.

Woke up at 1 am and couldn't go back to sleep. At 5am Rebecca very kindly took me to the airport for my flight to Kal. It was only 40 minutes because of tailwinds. Arrived and was greeted by Leon, whom I haven't seen for three months!

Leon has a nice little two bedroom place - rent is expensive in SA terms and even by Aussie standards because there is a housing shortage in the area. Also, many people here rent because they only work here on a temporary basis, so rental property comes at a premium. Leon has bought a Honda CRV which is a lovely car and MUCH cheaper here than in SA (even converting from AUD!). We really get ripped off for cars in SA!

Went for brekky in town. The town is very cute but it was very quiet because there is very little Sunday trading in WA. But we walked past the bottle shop and that was open. Aussies have their priorities right! Leon also says it's quiet because they're all recovering from the Saturday night piss-up. We then did the main tourist attractions of the town. Drove to the Super Pit lookout point. Yes, it is a rather big hole in the ground. The aussies seem quite proud of it. But it has taken them 120 years to dig it, and I couldn't help thinking that South African ingenuity and cheap labour could have effected it in less time than that!

Then we drove to the Mt Charlotte look out point and water reservoir. Now really, to call this modest elevation from the surrouding flatness a "mount" is a stretch. A "mound" would be a more accurate description. From the top you can see the thriving metropolis of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. It was thrilling.

Near to Leon's place there is another "lookout point". It really is cute how they actually put a sign (sponsored by Rotary or some other do-gooder organisation) on a 5 meter high elevation, looking out over scrubland to a large pile of mine debris and a railway line, and turn it into a "tourist attraction". We had a good laugh. Ten for effort.

To make a South African comparison it reminds me of Beaufort West. I think that's partly because of the similar looking natural surroundings, but Kal is bigger I think. There are no Cape Coloureds but there are scruffy looking Aborigines roaming around. The facilities here are quite impressive. The airport is very modern looking and apparently there's a nice gym, a few decent restaurants and hotels. I'll update later on what I find.

In the afternoon we went to go and visit some of Leon's new found friends. Gavin and Eugene live in the Kempton Park of Kal (near the airport) in a very nice house. Then we went to Shane and Sinead. A very Westralian couple. Shane is a copper from Perth who has moved to Kal police station. He told us that he has the distinctive job task of checking the stickers on the skimpies breasts. Some background: Kalgoorlie is well known in these parts for its skimpy bars. Basically, partly clothed ladies serve you in the pubs here. But they can't go fully topless or naked. They have to put these stickers over the nipples (remember, like Scope magazine in the old days!) - but of course the girls try to evade this restriction to earn extra tips (I would imagine). So Shane's job is to inspect nipple stickers! Hmmm. Sinead has an excellent sense of humour and we laughed when she said that when Leon and Eugene speak Afrikaans it sounds like StarTrek-ese!

So that was basically the day in Kal. As I intend to move here in the next few months, I am feeling quite happy that this will be a cool place to live - for a while. It seems it's big enough not to know EVERYONE in town, but small enough to have the advantages of small town life. I'm so Joburg'd-out that I actually can't wait to come here.

Please let me know if you've enjoyed my ramblings or if you think i'm talking k-a-k. If there's appetite for it I'll try and update here every few days. I'm in Aus for another 4 weeks and we're going to drive down to the south west for a few days and i'll also be in Perth again before I go back. So it won't be 4 weeks of Kalgoorlie!!!!

Best regards

Roo aka Greg

[Annette]

Very interesting, Greg. Thanks for taking the time to put that down on "paper" . Had a good laugh at Shane's job . I think if Marius read this, he'll be at the police recruitment office in a flash - only problem is in Adelaide there are no stickers to inspect - , or so I hear

[JJV]

Please let me know if you've enjoyed my ramblings

Hi Greg

Please keep up the good work, I am sure that I am not the only one enjoying reading these reports.

[PROzzie]

Always eager to read someone’s impressions about Australia. Please continue.

[Sam]

Hi Greg, I had a good laugh at your observations. I wish I penned down a few thoughts after we arrived... it would surely make for some interesting reading now. Everything seem so blasé after a while.

[Mauritzvw]

Great post Roo, let us know more in a few days !!!

Candice

[roo]

Hi

Sorry for the long time to the next update. I guess I got over my jet lag . From the time of my last post I spent the next week in Kal. The weather was very much the same as typical Joburg winter weather. Fine and mild. Besides sleeping late , I got to go around town doing a few errands like sorting out my banking account, posting some stuff for a friend in SA who is also starting the immigration process, drinking coffee, etc. I also had to get the washing machine debacle sorted out and the handy man guy had to come.

Just a warning to anyone who moves to Kal and is renting a property - DO NOT USE WADES FIRST NATIONAL rental agency They are a bunch of rude cows! I called them to get the number of the handy man who was coming to fix some things in the flat and I landed up getting a immigration officer style interrogation from a lady called Jacqui. Leon said they had also been rude to him and I've spoken to two people who have also complained about how stuck up, rude and unhelpful they are.

But besides them, everyone in Kal has been very nice. The main street, Hannan Street is a nice shopping street with a surprising variety of shopping available. Basically there is not too much that cannot be easily sourced in Kalgoorlie. Combined with the shopping street in Boulder, Burt Street, there are all kinds of shops. Even laundries that do ironing - which is a godsend for me .

Doing shopping, I've noticed there are certain things that are quite expensive - like some fruit and veg. Like I wanted to get some baby marrows at Coles and there were two varieties: the small ones and the somewhat larger marrows. The kilogram difference in price (the large ones were cheaper) was almost 2 times. So you need to keep an eye open for things like that. But meat is very reasonably priced here. Last night I bought a packet of chicken pieces, seasoned for grilling for equivalent of R60. Which is probably what you would pay for the equivalent in Woolies. I don't know if it's just a Kal thing, but chicken doesn't seem to be big here. There is very little variety and it takes up only about 10% of the space on the meat shelves. In the Hannans 24hr IGA they don't even stock non-frozen chicken. Weird.

As far as eating out is concerned, I've found that eating in restaurants is very expensive here. Even if you're earning dollars. If you want to eat out for cheaper then you need to go to a self-service place where prices are more reasonable. Basically, if you go to a full service place you're looking at between $25 and up for a meat main dish. Eish! If you go self service it's about $15. Leon and I went for dinner at an Italian restaurant in Kal and meal for the two of us with no wine (we had a few beers) came to $130.

I must say I've been having a laugh at some of the West Australian TV. They've got a regional TV channel on which small businesses can advertise. They are quite funny. I'm very interested in hearing about the wonderful rug variety at some rug shop in Karratha in North western australia ! And of course the crime news (which usually is headline news) is like "two teenagers were caught in downtown Broome for hooning and striking a lamppost" or something. On the politics front it's clear that Aussies are climate change "befok". It's a huge issue for the upcoming elections and they go on and on and on about it on tv. It's a bit irritating actually. I mean Australians, although they are heavy carbon emitters on a per capita basis, they only contribute 1.4% of the world's total carbon emmissions and they're meeting their Kyoto protocol goals. They're not going to save the world, so they should just chill (excuse the expression).

Last week we took a trip down the south west. We left last Saturday and drove down to Esperance which takes about 4 hours. The weather was grotty but I had found a lovely B+B on the great ocean drive. Which is where you must stay. The beaches are beautiful. It's also close to some amazing national parks like the Cape Le Grand National park. There are great hiking and camping opportunities there. We spent two days in Esperance. Then we drove down to Albany which is a whole day drive. The vegetation is very similar to the cape. It looks like fynbos but it isn't. We stayed with my Rebecca's boyfriend's parents. They were very hospitable and it was great staying in their beautiful home with a magnificent view of a beautiful estaury. Albany is a great little town, we could easily stay there. The weather had fortunately improved and it was quite warm. We also spent two nights in Albany before moving on to Walpole. We did the famous tree top forest walk which was spectacular. Walpole is in the famous Southern Karri and Tinglewood forests. The trees are realy majestic and our cabin was in a clearing in the forest. It was really excellent and good value accommodation too. We paid $90 p/n for self catering accommodation. Then we were off to Nannup where Rebecca's mom's holiday cottage is. Nannup is a bit of a hippy town (a bit like Darling). Rebecca and Matt cam and joined us for the weekend and we had a lovely time together. Basically much drinking was done. On Monday (Foundation Day in WA) we drove back the 820km to Kal. The South West is Australia's best kept secret. And it really does help that it's reasonably close to Kal. I'm sure that if you live here every now and then it's good to get out of the brownness and in to the greenness which is only a few hour's drive away.

Well, I'm in Kal until Tuesday morning and then I'm off to Perth for a few days. And then back home

Cheers mates!

Roo

[Cindylou]

Hey Roo

Thanx for the update! Great to hear about your travels down south. Last time we were there we also trekked a little around that area and it was really beaut. Closer to Perth there are also some great spots which are really accessible for short trips aways from the city. Saw a farm in the Margaret River area called "Gatvol" which was really weird!

On the food front - have you noticed how no-one in Aus seems to roast whole chickens? They arrive home fully stuffed and cooked! Also, the sausages are truly dreadful and the bread not much better.

We're off to Perth on 14 June, hopefully the weather's not too bad. Enjoy what's left of your trip and keep posting!

C'Lou

[Mauritzvw]

Thanks Roo,

Very informative, keep up the good writing !!

[louiecw]

On the food front - have you noticed how no-one in Aus seems to roast whole chickens?

That seems so weird...

Thanks for the update

Edited June 7, 2007 by louiecw

[DesV]

Great read having lived in Kal for 5 years before moving to Perth, in all honesty Kal is one of the best places to start up it is really friendly and down to earth best of luck

Des

[Rodz]

Do they play cricket in Kal?

[Robert & Telanie]

Hi almal

Ons is een van die dae in Kalgoorlie. Iemand wat dalk kan help na watter websites ek nog kan gaan kyk vir behuising (verhuring).

Ons het gister 'n werksaanbod gekry, is sien baie uit. Dankie vir al die inligting wat ons van julle almal af kry. Dit help baie.

O ja en voor ek vergeet, na watter area moet ek kyk waar dit darem ok is om in te bly, dit is net ek en my man, en ons soek eers net 'n 1-slaapkamer plekkie, verkieslik gemeubileerd.

Telanie

Edited June 9, 2007 by Robert & Telanie