Saturday 26 January 2008

Australia Day - In Perth

Australia Day is MASSIVE in Perth. It's their most important day of the year and they take it very seriously. We returned to check it out and report back to our bloggers! So what's it all about Alfie? Well it celebrates the day Australia was discovered 26th Jan 1770 (this should have been a cup of tea question!) and is slightly controversial. If your an Aboriginal, there's nothing much you want to celebrate about the arrival of the Europeans, in fact the indigenous people have their own name for the day, which I can't remember but reflects the sadness of their plight.

They have a bike race down at the banks of the mighty river Swan - if only I had brought my bike along.....




We went up to Kings Park to get an aerial view of the proceedings, including the air show (Sunderland has nothing to fear - our air show is still the best!)






Here we are having our 'picnic in the park' waiting for the fireworks - the place was packed!





































I'm not keen on taking pictures of fireworks, but I tried so you all could get the idea. They had fireworks going off from barges on the river and fireworks off the top of the sky-scraper office blocks, all in time with a musical theme. It was very impressive.













This is the office blocks - the other pictures are from the barges on the river.

After Australia Day we move a few miles South to Fremantle for our last few days in Oz - then it's off to a whole different adventure, Indonesia! Bali is our first stop on the 31st January.







4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Billies!!!

Happy Australia Day!

love Shirls x

Anonymous said...

Hmmmmm...the Aborigines need to get together with the Native Americans. They can both toss around the names they've given to Europeans. To be quite serious here, I think the reason most of us are drawn to forests, oceans, streams, mountains and monoliths is to find that time before man messed things up. Am I being too philisophical?

If so, then how about that River Swan? Did you put on your Al Jolson voice and sing, "Way down upon the Swannee River...."?

Anonymous said...

Is the bloke sitting behind you in the picnic picture, sooo embarrassed about them re-entry shield glasses, he's actually had to hide his face from the camera in case he's recognised?

And I'm not talking about Suzanne, them there glasses is lovely.

Anonymous said...

Nah Paul, its because his wife probably thinks he's at work. Not sunning himself with his mate and a few tinnys!!