Part 62 - Perth (not the Scottish one)

On arriving at my backpacker's hostel in Perth, I honestly thought I had wandered into a building site by accident. Workmen, dust, and noise everywhere. However, of greater concern was waking up the next morning with dozens of insect bites. What a bin this place was. I would urge anyone visiting Perth to avoid Emu Backpackers Hostel like the plague (which I may very well have contracted while I was there).

Sadly booking.com removed the picture I added of my insect-ravaged arm

One advantage of staying in a shit-hole is that you want to spend as little time there as possible. My first visit was to the Perth Gaming Museum. They even had a funky Pacman-inspired map to help you get there.

Shame they'd moved the month before, thus rendering this map utterly useless.

I wisely avoided the museum at the weekend, for it would have surely been crawling with kids. In fact, I had the place to myself, so I got to view in peace, a plethora of different gaming consoles and peripherals dating back to before the days of Pong, through to the present day.

Sadly I never got a shot on one of these.

There were also dozens of systems set-up with thousands of retro-games, although it wasn't quite the same when there's nobody else there to beat them at.

The other trip I'd been looking forward to greatly was a trip to Rottnest island, a half hour ferry ride from the port city of Fremantle. The island is famous for its quokka, a small furry marsupial that has no fear of humans and an ability to occasionally pull funny faces for the camera. You're not allowed to touch them or feed them, but there was a bit of an art of enticing them over - and some were more inquisitive than others.

It had been raining quite a bit all day, so unfortunately, getting selfies with quokkas generally meant rolling about in the mud. Still, it was a great day out, and I now know how David Attenborough feels :)