Perth Aug 6-10, 2009

We spent 4 very pleasant days in Perth, staying with our good friend’s sister, Cheryl. She was amazingly accommodating and gracious since we basically took over the place, there are so many of us. Here’s a picture of Elise & her cat Sparkle.

While in Perth, we saw the Perth Mint, (the kids liked that, they had a neat demonstration of pouring liquid gold into a gold bar worth $400,000), and spent a relaxing day at Kings Park (which is like the “Central Park” of Perth). Kings Park was really nice. It has a war memorial, botanic gardens with great colorful birds and massive old fig trees and even a Boab tree . Kings Park also has an amazing playground for the kids (which of course, they liked the best).

We went south of Perth one of the days, to a city called Fremantle and saw a local Aussie rules football game and stopped and learned the rules of the game from the locals. Then ended the day in the Fremantle Prison & Shipwreck museum. After reading the gruesome stories of the prisoners and their living conditions – Henry innocently asked ‘Why would anyone want to go to prison?’. Paul said, "Hopefully our explanation will keep him on a good path in life, and out of the klink!"

But the real gem of the things we did in Perth was Caversham Wildlife Park. The last time Paul and I came to Australia, (on our honeymoon 13 years ago,) we went to a wildlife park outside of Sydney where you could feed kangaroos, wallabys & emus, and pet koalas. It was so unique; we never forgot that experience, and we’ve been waiting all these years to bring the kids to Australia so they could do that too. Luckily, this wildlife park delivered. 1) It had lots of local Australia animals: local birds & owls, dingos, flying foxes, wombat, Tasmanian devil, etc… 2) There was a farm/petting zoo area where we watched a 45 minute farm show where they sheared a sheep (Paul and I found that so interesting since we’d never seen that before.) and had sheep dogs do a demonstration rounding up sheep. And, they let the kids milk a cow afterward. But the best part was 3) feeding the kangaroos & emus. They had a big tin can of food pellets and you could just take huge handfuls and feed them to the animals. Paul said, “I swear Henry touched every single kangaroo in the place.” There were probably 100 of them in the large 3 acre park-like enclosure. And lest I forget, 4) there were koalas we could pet as well. It was amazing and the kids loved it. To see their faces light up when they fed and pet the kangaroos and pet the koalas was absolutely priceless.

Charlie’s journal entry about the time we spent in Perth:
Today we went to a wildlife park. It was soooo asom we got to pet kangroos and even feed them. We could pet kwallas we even pet a wombat but we couldn’t find the flying squiril. We saw Tasmanian devals and foxes with razer sharp teeth and even dingo dogs. Today we went to a mint and even saw somebody make a gold bar. We really made a new coin and we went to the prisin and to a shipwreck museum. After that we went to a playground were I played a made up game. It started to rain like a wizard used some magic. We had to make a mad dash for cover and I convinced mom to go to Hungry Jacks (over here they call Burger King Hungry Jacks.)

Henry’s journal entry:
I liked peting the red kangaroos. Espeshely the emoos. Jacob droped (dropped) his glasses! It was in its cage. We saw a lot of bees! There were about 50! I liked peting the kawalas and the sheep. I liked milking the cows. I liked peting the rabbits. Espeshely the baby ones. I liked seeing the three dogs. One of them were called Henry. First we saw Jack, he rounded up all of the sheep. Then they let Henry out, then Billy. We saw a cool eagle. It was making a nest! We got to pet other animals too. It was very very very very very very fun!!!!!!!!

We've had very little internet access until now. We've been in an RV, driving around Western Australia for 10 days. I'll try to post about it soon. Tomorrow we are off to Japan.

I located Jacob's journal (hard to find in this RV) and here's what he wrote about the wildlife park:

Yesterday we went to an awesome wildlife park. After we paid to get in, we immediately went on the first loop. We saw tons of animals, like wallabies and small owls. On the way out we saw a ranger getting ready to feed the animals so we decided to watch. It was definitely worth it! We got to see an owl with a tiny mouth swallow a mouse whole!
After the first loop we went to a show. Rangers showed us 4 animals, 3 of which we got to pet. They were really cool. My favorite was Harry the Wombat.
Then we went to see the kangaroos. As we walked through the gate I was amazed. There were tons of kangaroos lying around lazily getting fed by excited tourists. There was a massive can of pellets waiting to be fed to the kangaroos. It was so cool to feed them, one actually stood up against me!
In the corner of the kangaroo area there were emus you could feed. As I was feeding one, it grabbed my glasses! After a taste test the emu dropped it on the ground. Dad had to lean over the fence to get them back. Now my glasses have a scratch on the left lens.
Next we went to pet some koalas. They were low on small trees so you could reach out to pet them. It was cool to see them right there in front of you.
Finally we saw a farm show. We were shown a sheepdog herding sheep, saw a sheep being sheared, and milked a cow. I discovered that sheep shearers are paid $345 a day on average, how to milk a cow, and that sheep and cows aren’t potty trained.