Edd's Travels: Perth, Australia

On my first visit to Oz, in 2008, I visited Sydney and Melbourne. On my second visit, in 2013, I visited...er...Sydney and Melbourne. Epic exploration fail. So, as with the New Zealand visit just ended, I'm putting that to rights by branching out a bit. When I say 'a bit', I mean 1695 miles, which is the distance between Melbourne and Perth. It's slightly more than the distance between London and Moscow.

My journey to the USA began pre-dawn with a 6am flight, and my journey to New Zealand began post-bedtime with an 11:55pm flight. So it was nice to get back to civilised hours with a 9.50am flight to Oz. Plenty of time for a McMuffin breakfast before heading to check-in (or "chicken", as the Kiwis call it).

If I'm being completely honest, I have found Perth ever so slightly underwhelming. It's a perfectly nice place, and nothing bad has happened here, but these round-the-world trips set the bar pretty high and I can't think of anything in particular that would make me want to come back to Perth. The one event of note for me here was of course watching the derby match, which, in case any of you don't already know, finished Sunderland 3 Newcastle 0. Glorious. And this was on the same day that I learned there was a chunky HMRC tax refund waiting for me back home...

However it was frustrating and slightly surreal to be watching the match on a silent TV screen in an almost entirely deserted pub. Also, all the pubs shut at 10pm on a Sunday, and the liquor stores likewise. Even when the pubs were open, I was stuck with drinking Australian beer, about which the kindest thing that can be said is that it's not quite as bad as New Zealand beer. Fortunately, whenever I'm travelling my backpack always contains a hip flask of single malt Scotch precisely for emergencies such as these. I came back to the hostel and sipped contentedly.