Getting to Perth- Feb 7

Summary: fin flip goodbye, some bugs are better than others, farmland and people, Perth lets their highway get Canadized, all the Shielas love the redhead

We got up early and waited for the dolphins...and waited. Sometimes these wild animals are less than punctual. They showed up to see us off and Alex could not have been less interested. After a bit of complaining (mine or his - maybe both), he wandered off to play in the sand, but he still got to feed the dolphins when that part came about. He enjoyed that and all was good. With that, we bid adieu to Monkey Mia and drove south.

There have been insects with us at every stage of the trip. Even when we couldn't see them, termite mounds (or bug bites) reminded us. Moving into the more temperate zone, I thought we would see fewer. To the contrary. There may have actually been more bugs up north, but at least they had the decency not to detonate on my windshield. Sorry to be graphic, but from about 100km north of Geraldton until well south of Geraldton, we had to stop far more than the demands of gasoline called for to clear the windshield of those unknown but not unnoticed creatures. Had it not rained the last three hours into Perth, I may have actually taken the rental car to a car wash.

The drive saw a marked change in landscape about when the bugs showed up - no more scrubby tropical trees and remorselessly flat landscape. From that point forth, we got rolling hills, distant valley, open plains, neatly cultivated fields, and stands of more substantial looking trees (sorry I can't name any of them...but it is just as well as it would just cause me to use more words). From Geraldton on, it looked much more like Oklahoma, Kansas (as in Kansas City - the eastern part with rolling hills, not the flat part), and even Virginia or Pennsylvania than it had up north, which resembled south Texas. I also saw waves and white caps in the ocean for the first time (or they were well-placed streaks from sacrificial bugs).

In our ongoing theme of town slogans, Badgingarra chose not to simply go with the slogan "say it ten times really fast" in favor of "Truly Rural". Sorry mate, there were other cars on the road and the next town was less than 150km away. You're not truly rural in my eyes, although it does look like a nice little farming community.

Perth has this issue that much of Canada has - when its country highways show up in town, they morph into main streets complete with stoplights and turns. Highway 1 is THE ROAD from the north, and it just turns into one of many surface streets. There is something I would recognize as a highway (divided road, several lanes in both directions) but the turnoff for it was not labeled and is not convenient from the main road from the north. I don't want to generalize for all Australian bigger cities, but Perth's road net reminds me of one of the less ideal attributes of some other cities I like (Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Quebec). (I let Cairns and Darwin off the hook for this as they are much smaller) Explanation: I love visiting Canada, but the roads are usually a bit annoying - drive from the US border to Vancouver and you have highway, highway, stoplight, left turn, am I lost(?), oh here it is, one of the nicest downtowns in North America and I was going to ask the guy running the Dim Sum place how to get there. Quebec: highway, highway, left over a 2-lane bridge, side road, main street, city center. Toronto on the other hand: airport -> highway -> exit downtown (ahh!). Aside: I continue to be astounded how closely Australians follow the speed limit or drive 10km below it. I have no idea why this could be, but my speedometer does appear to work.

Naturally, as soon as we got to Perth, we got dinner and Alex was set upon by a table of youthful females (in their 20's, a good audience to target in the years to come). One wanted to buy him another apple juice but he did not finish his first. There were no deserts, so she gave him a $2 coin which he has hung on to with fervor. In the future, Alex will learn to ask for phone numbers (yet another good reason to learn to count).

Editor's note: sorry there were no photos today - I took a couple, but they did not make the cut

Next: activities in Perth