The time my travel plans went wrong

 A few years ago I took the Ghan Train trip from Darwin to Adelaide, Australia, and loved every moment of it so I made it my mission to take the Indian Pacific train from Perth to Sydney.   I would then have travelled from the top to the bottom  and from the West coast to the East coast of Australia. It's pretty satisfying to carry out a plan.

This was the plan but in reverse ( Photo Indian Pacific Publicity)

In high anticipation I duly booked the trip and flew the seven and a half hours to Perth from Auckland.  Perth is a fresh, modern city and I liked the look of it immediately but things went wrong as soon as I arrived.  Firstly I couldn't find a taxi or get an Uber, it being a busy Saturday night, so I set out to walk to my hotel from the railway station. Unfortunately I walked back and forth along the street I thought it was on several times before finding it tucked away down a side street.  When I went to check in I was told they had no record of my booking and the hotel was full, despite the fact I had received an email confirming my booking. The only room available was right under the hotel's very noisy air conditioning unit.  No sleep at all for the next two nights!

Fortunately I was booked to go on a 3 day tour of the Margaret River region on the third day.  That tour was wonderful (I have written about it in previous posts)  Run by the McLeod family tour company it was faultless. 

The Bell tower, Perth.  Interesting architecture

We returned to Perth for a two day stopover before catching the train.  Would you believe it? Hotel reception once again told me they had no booking for me and, yes, once again I had an email confirming that they did. Fortunately I stood my ground and managed to get a better room this time.  I spent the next couple of days sightseeing and enjoying Perth.  The night before the train trip was to start I went to the hotel bar to have a drink with some traveling companions I had met on the Margaret River trip. When I arrived one of them asked me "Have you heard the news?"  I hadn't.  Turned out the train trip had been cancelled due to flooding on the tracks.  What a disappointment, that had been the whole purpose of my trip.  So new plans had to be made.  

Janine and Steve, great companions making 
a trouble shared a trouble halved

Since the train was meant to go to Sydney and I had booked my flight home to New Zealand from there I needed to book a flight to Sydney which I did early the next day. Fortunately two of my fellow travellers booked the same flight.  I also contacted my hotel in Sydney and extended my stay for three nights.

The three of us duly went to the airport for our flight and guess what?  The flight was cancelled.  Talk about a comedy of errors.  We were told our flight would be the next day so needed to book a hotel near the airport for the night which we did.  To top it all off we exited the airport to find a taxi queue about a hundred yards long but none of the drivers wanted to take us because the trip was too short and they would lose their place in the queue for a possible longer trip.  Then the taxi drivers started arguing with each other, shouting and fists were raised.  Oh my goodness, by asking for a taxi we had started a riot! Finally a taxi from a long way back in the queue came to our rescue.  As we drove away we could see the taxi drivers still shouting at each other. Phew! We all had a good laugh about it later.

Lovely view of the Swan River and Perth from an unexpected stay at the Aloft Hotel 

The hotel we spent our night in was lovely, we all enjoyed it and were quickly refunded the cost by the airline. The next day we flew to Sydney with no problems and I spent a few days sightseeing in and around Sydney before flying home. We all agreed that we would be unlikely to book the Indian Pacific again.  I don't think cancellations of it are rare but who knows, maybe one day

Cocktails in Sydney

The very last insult was that my hotel in Sydney charged me for the night I wasn't there due to my flight being cancelled.  I had contacted them immediately the flight was cancelled but apparently that wasn't soon enough.

The question is "Did I have a good trip?"  Yes I did, I had a fabulous time. I met and spent time with some lovely people, I saw spectacular places I had never seen before, the weather was beautiful and evening cocktails at the hotel bar overlooking Darling Harbour in Sydney were a special treat.  I didn't come home feeling disappointed at all.  The trip wasn't what I'd planned but I'd made the most of it.  I'm a great believer in just going with the flow.

Rottnest Island, West Australia and the Delightful Quokka

Rottnest Island (Aboriginal name Wadjemup) lies 19 kilometres off the coast of Perth. It is a sandy, low lying island so named by the Dutch explorer, De Vlamingh in 1696, who called it "Paradise on earth" but thought the adorable little quokka that inhabit the island looked like large rats. I was keen to visit the island I had heard so much about, and especially to see the quokka, so on a bright and sunny autumn day I set off with two travelling companions on the ferry from Perth.  We had all bought a package tour which included the ferry trip, admission to the island, lunch and a bus tour around the island.  The  trip down the Swan River was slow and scenic with just one stop at Fremantle to pick up more passengers and from there a high speed 30 minute trip to the island.

Thomson Bay

I was surprised to find the main town on the island, Thomson Bay, was a hive of activity, thronged with tourists with multiple restaurants, souvenir shops, bike hireage and accommodation.  For some reason I hadn't expected the island to have a resort feel about it although having a permanent population of only 300 it has annual visitor numbers of 780,000 so I shouldn't have been surprised.  We had been hoping we would be lucky enough to see at least one quokka, we shouldn't have worried, they were everywhere.  Very, very cute and harmless.

Quokka - about the size of a cat

The bus tour was worth its weight in gold covering a large part of the 19 kilometre square island.   In an hour and a half we got to see the stunning pure white, sandy beaches and clear turquoise waters fringing the shores, seals swimming in the sea, native birds and various other wild life.  We also learnt about the island's sad and colourful history.  At various times it has been used as a harsh prison for Aborigines, a reformatory school for offending youth, a military out post and even as a quarantine station during the covid epidemic of 2020.  Nowdays it has left that sad history behind and is a very popular holiday spot especially for divers and snorkelers searching for its delicious lobsters and scallops.

Although there are various bays with settlements and accommodation most of the island is scrubby and unspoilt and our tour driver told us the island is also infested with snakes.  I was so pleased I was on the bus!  The only vehicles permitted on the island are buses and official vehicles so the roads are largely free from traffic apart from masses of cyclists.  Hiring a bike seems to be the thing to do on Rottnest.  We passed many, many cyclists, some sunburnt from the sweltering sun, some having had accidents and most looking exhausted.  Cycling the island is not as easy as visitors seem to think, there is almost no shade and nowhere, apart from the main town, to buy drinks or refreshments. If you go to Rottnest I highly recommend taking the bus tour, a much easier, more comfortable way to see the island, that is, unless you really are a keen cyclist and well prepared, I suspect many we saw were not.

We had a delicious lunch and glass of wine at Freddies in Thomson Bay. All the restaurants and shops have small gates at the entry to prevent the quokka from entering. There are signs everywhere telling people not to feed them but there are always some stupid people who do.  Eating human food is very bad for their health.  After lunch we went in search of quokka in their natural environment and stumbled across one that was obviously ill. We like to think we did our bit by ringing the island's vet who  came quickly to take it away for treatment. Eventually we found a quokka in a quiet, bushy spot and spent some time photographing and observing it, then we went to the beach and sat in a shady shelter there admiring the view and waiting for the ferry to go home.  It had been a great day, we had seen as many quokka as we could possibly wish to and had learnt a lot about this interesting island.