Perth, Western Australia
For the first time in a very long while, we don't drive the car at all. Instead, we do a few attractions in central Perth: visit the Art Gallery (with a traveling exhibition from the Kuwait National Museum) and the Western Australian Museum, wander through the downtown shops, go to the cinema to see Insomnia, and do a bit more book shopping.
It's a day without much to report. We woke up, had tea and cereal and scrambled the two eggs that came with the apartment breakfast basket.
Then it was down the street, bright and sunny--it's the warmest day yet this spring, with temperatures getting to 25C--but the street trees are still bare. They're liquidambar trees, and I'm amused because they're the same street trees we had where I was growing up. A favorite trick was to put them down someone's back in the playground. Near the Perth train station, I spot more childhood street trees, a variety of plane tree that has California sycamore somewhere in its roots. These sycamores have strings of seed balls about the size of golf balls. The playground trick with these is to pull a few of them out, then throw them at someone and make the whole ball explode in a mess of seeds and yellow dust.
Across the Perth train station, on the other side of the tracks, is the cultural center. First, we go to the Art Gallery and wander around. Nothing all that exceptional in the main collection, though there's a Lucien Freud painting called "Naked Man With A Rat" (you can see it at http://www.elizabethdesign.com/freud.html in the right hand column. The rat is kinda easy to overlook.) Freud was in the news a couple of months ago as Queen Elizabeth commissioned him for a portrait--and while it was very interesting, it wasn't all that flattering. That's at http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page892. asp
Anyway, we also went into the Kuwait National Museum's traveling exhibition. Kuwait's museum buildings were looted and destroyed in the Gulf War, though Iraq gave most of the collection back a year or so later. But with no place to show it, pieces have been roaming around the world until the new museum in Kuwait is finished. I found it interesting that it presented a wide variety of Islamic art from Spain through to southeast Asia, and from 700AD until the late 1700's: things like bowls and daggers. It also hit me why Arab astronomy was quite advanced around the years 800 to 1000: they needed to be able to orient their prayers towards Mecca. And the familiarity with geometry also lead to the intricate designs often associated with Islamic art. There were also figurative art--Islam doesn't strictly forbid representation of the human form, as I learned. Anyway, it was fairly interesting.
After that, we went over to the Western Australia Museum. Normally I like natural history museums, but this one was scattered across four or five or ten buildings, and after seeing a few interesting things like the thalacyleo (a marsupial lion) skeleton that was recently found, I just didn't want to see anymore. We did quickly did peer at some of the stuffed mammals in the Hall of Mammals, housed in old jarrah cases that look like they were built when Queen Victoria was on the throne. No stuffed marmot, alas.
Then we walked back into Perth city, and walked through Myer department store. Whoo hoo, belts are on sale! I picked up a fancy new one for me, and Chris gets my old belt as a hand-me-up. After that, we wandered around looking for the cinemas to see Insomnia... I knew it was 580 Hay Street, but often in Australia streets aren't numbered by block--one street can have the even 600's and 700's on one side, and the odd 300's on the other. After a confusing ten minutes, we found it.
We both really enjoyed Insomnia. Well done.
A quick stop at Vintage Cellars netted us some wine--a bubbly for the night, and a Special Bottle for Chris' birthday. The bubbly we had--a Tate and Evans 1999 Rosé--was boringly sweet in that expensive way. No toasty yeasty flavors that I like, and Chris said 'there is no acid'. It just didn't taste right. Oh well.
We also watched the first of many 9/11 specials on the Nine Network. This one was all on New York, with a long interview of Mayor Giuliani intermixed with lots of amateur and news video clips, as well as other interviews with mayoral staff. I thought I'd put all those odd emotions away, those feelings of numb shock and confused apprehension that something else big was going to happen. Watching the videos of the World Trade Center towers collapsing and people jumping and fleeing that made me feel a lot of those feelings again... it seems like most of those images and videos have been quietly kept out of public sight for the past year so as not to offend, but now they're back. Ick. It was a big day, and that TV special made me realize I still feel sore and hurt and a cold sadness from those events.
Weird Wildlife Sighting
Nothing much.
Where we stayed
- Quest West End Apartment Hotel, Perth
- $103 - one bedroom apartment
- Bathttub is still great after three days :-)