By the numbers
Numerous bottles of water
19,241 steps
14.48 kms
The night was slightly better with the window open all night. The best part was that there were no mozzies to say hello. I have no aircon and it seems to be the beginning of a heatwave so there will bound to be issues relating to the heat around. At least I can have a cold shower, which would be alright.
I was awake around 5am for a specific reason, although it was still pretty warm at that time and the sun seemed to be up. I wanted to take the walking route to the station, that I had wanted to several days before, but had not due to the heat knocking the wind out of my sails. That time of morning proved that the weather was going to be another hot day. The plan was for me to check the route was easy, and then return to Karrakatta cemetery for part 2 of the cemetery tour. I was thinking about walking to the Botanic gardens, but was leaving that to see what would happen next. When I left some guy along the way asked to borrow my phone and I looked at him and said no. No way in hell was I going to do that and I just kept on walking. There were stops along the way to the station as I had breakfast and looked at some sights along the way.
The walk I found was pretty easy and I could happily do it without any dramas just like walking through the cemetery with my bags several days before. On arrival, I was in time for watching the WA Prospector train being loaded up and leaving for Kalgoorlie. I just happened to be there that early. I needed to fill up my water bottle at that time too and I didn’t actually stick around for that long before I was on the train to Karrakatta. I really could feel that at 8am it was going to be hotter and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Once at the cemetery, I was happy the gates were open, but the cafe didn’t seem to be at that time. I followed the numbers and got lost when I was following the cemetery heritage trail number 2. The best part of reading the sign posts was the QR code provided more background information to the individuals. That was some great use to QR codes what with the pandemic and all that. I am not sure if some of the markers were missing or not. The not so fun part was walking through several spiderwebs. I managed to refill my water bottle after going to the loo and noticed some others grabbing the heritage trail books. I kept an eye on them as I thought they ended up lost too. Turns out they were looking for someone specific and I told them they could use the cemetery website through Google to search for who they were looking for. I wasn’t sure if they realised it was a huge cemetery. I ended up in the Chinese section of the cemetery where there were people tending to the graves and nearby I found a local business owner, and also a Qantas co founder buried in the cemetery. By this time I knew I couldn’t walk anywhere further in the heat as it would have been too far with little in the way of water. Part of the trail took me past the mausoleum that I had to stop along the way for a look. I was trying to stick to the shade as the sun had bite. When I did end up out the front of the cemetery, I found the cafe must be closed on weekends. Another refill and I was heading for the train.
In my infinite wisdom, I thought to tackle the issue of visiting the Botanical Gardens from the other end of Perth, from the Elizabeth Quay side. I ended up on the underground that took me to the Quay as I didn’t want to walk there. When I surfaced, I realised the walk would take at least half hour and I wasn’t wanting to do that as I couldn’t guarateee that it would be in shade. The temp was reading 38 degrees and I was going nope. The best thing about being in that area was that I had access to bubblers that filled my water bottle up. While I was there I filled mine up at least 3 times and its 1.25 litres. Not sure what I wanted I checked out the nearest boat river cruise and ended up booking myself on that. I had an hour wait so I got something to eat and returned. The best part was the boat was covered and I wasn’t walking.
I was happy to be off my feet and under cover of a boat. We would be cruising around 20kms of river. The first location was a little blue shed that was very attractive to Asian tourists. Somehow the unassuming blue shed was one of a few pictures on the very first Samsung touch screen phones. It was very popular with Asian tourists because apparently they love that sort of stuff. Around the blue boat shed were jellyfish. We ended up where the first and only fatal shark attack happened in the Swan River around the 1920s I think it was. We did get to see a baby Osprey that was sitting on a branch. I felt the tour was good enough when I had breeze that blew the sweat away and cooled things down a touch. We went in and out of sail boats safely, and looked at the houses the mega rich owned like one guy from Australian Minerals, yeah a touch like the miners owned a few homes inclkuding one that could have been 3 homes, but spread out like it was an estate of sorts. We were on the boat for over an hour or so and got to see parts of Perth that you wouldn’t always see from the water. The funny thing about the skyscrapers were the miners had the tallest buildings followed by the banks, who were dwarfed by the miner like BHP and Rio Tinto. They seem to have a bit of influence in Perth. I would say the boat trip was worth getting out and about even if I wasn’t required to walk it.
After getting off the boat, I filled my water bottle as I was really making sure I was hydrated and then came across something I had not been paying attention to. I could have gotten a day ticket instead of buying a single one when I needed. I ended up heading back to the hotel, though with the people who are staying here its like a half way type place, but the people are really nice anyway so I have no issue with dealing with them. I had thought it best to call it a day as I was worn out from the heat and needed a shower and arrest afterwards. I do need to pack before catching the train the next morning to Adelaide, so that should be the fun part.
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