Plants and Parrots.

Saturday 16^th October – Perth.

A beautiful day. We strolled along the banks of the river to Barrack Street Jetty.  This is where the ferries and pleasure boats to the islands arrive and depart. A busy place.

Alongside is a tower containing historic bells which visitors can ring for themselves. It has the complete set of bells from St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which were given to Western Australia to mark the bicentenary in 1988.

There are also fountains and aboriginal mosaic panels representing the regions of Western Australia. A great place to cool off as it was getting quite hot.

We spent the rest of the day at King’s Park and the Botanic gardens which is a fantastic place. It’s set in 4 sq.km. of natural bushland on a (very steep) hill overlooking the city. If anyone is planning to visit – take the bus!

  

The gardens contain over 2000 species of Western Australian plants, including a 750 year old Boab tree which was moved there from its previous location – 3200km to the north.

 

This is the aerial walkway. It was only a short section of the route around the gardens, but it gave a different perspective of the area.

We climbed a spiral tower to get a good view in all directions over the park, city and river. It is known as the DNA tower because of its appearance.

Marg ruined one poor child’s day by shouting at him, just because he had climbed to the top of the tower with the sole aim of seeing how far he could spit. Once a teacher . . . . !

 

 

 

Our favourite bit was when we went off the beaten track into the bush and spotted a kookaburra. You could hear them often, but this is the only one we've seen so far. As we were leaving it was obviously dinner time for the hundreds of local parrots.

 

 

They all congregated in a tree with especially tasty seeds and the noise was incredible – in fact “the tree was alive with the sound of parrots!” (Sorry)

 

 

 

A long walk back to the hotel and then a well deserved glass of wine.

Cheers!