Freo

Our perceptions of Fremantle changed for the better the following day. The weather was turning from cold to pleasantly warm, with most of the cloud clearing up and the sun poking its way through. In combination with the weekends arrival the weather began to bring out the cool people of Freo and the cappucino strip began to buzz. This was the Fremantle we remembered. My memory was sparked off by so many things, it seemed like just last week that we visited last. We ate fish and chips at the waterside restaurants and pizza at our favourite Aussie pizza chain, La Porchetta. We had a drink (proper beer!) in the Little Creatures brewery, a favourite place from our last visit. We lost most of one day to raging hangovers, the result of watching a band, Felix, at the Newport. They were pretty good but did too many covers for my liking. We did manage to take a walk on doggie beach before having to crawl home for a lie down. Gemma was continuously, 'ooohing,' and, 'ahhhing,' over the dogs. After being in South East Asia it was weird to see dogs on leads and not just running around randomly on the beach. I bought a new camera after much deliberation about which one to get. Harvey Norman, a department store here, was closing down the Fremantle branch so I managed to get a pretty good price. Sitting in the park eating self-made sandwiches and watching teenagers roll down a hill was quite nice too. It really was like we were just here last week.

We had decided to make our shortened trip to Australia into a nice long weekend away and managed it fairly well. Coming from South East Asia the price of food and beer was quite a shock but we soon got used to it. The Australian segment of our trip is being counted as a bit of a treat and so we aren't keeping to any kind of budget for it, not that we really did in Asia anyway!