Answer: It’s Perth-fect!
I’ve never been in such a perfect climate … wall-to-wall sunshine with horizon-to-horizon blue sky all day, every day, and with a slight breeze to stop it getting too hot.
This is what the sky looks like all the time –
So … apart from the flawless weather, what else is Perth like?
Well, it’s a clean, tidy and very relaxed city with extremely friendly locals – but if I’m being honest, it’s a bit staid and manicured for me. I prefer a bit more urban grit and buzz in my cities.
But it’s not totally bland; Perth does have its quirks.
These birds, living in a suburban garden, are decidedly quirky –
And when I saw this woman relaxing in a park I thought, ‘Oh my, she has a dog with purple ears!’ –
But when they got up to go, I could see that she actually had two dogs and they were even quirkier than I’d thought –
And how about this cream, for yet another quirk? –
Is it made from placenta, or do you apply it to your placenta? And why?
Perth is one of the remotest cities on Earth. It is nearly 4,000 km by road to Sydney or Melbourne, and is so far from all the other populous parts of Australia that it has a whole host of unique plants.
This is a 750-year-old boab tree –
Spot that blue sky again!
And I finally got to stand ‘under the shade of a coolibah tree’ –
There was no billabong, but you can’t have everything.
Unsurprisingly, as the climate is so warm and sunny, it’s ideal for growing grapes –
– and the Swan Valley and Margaret River are famous wine-producing areas.
But please learn from my mistake, and don’t sign up for a full day of wine-tasting that starts off at 11 am with 15 different wines in the first winery –
with another 9 wines before lunch, then six after lunch, followed by 5 artisan ciders –
This was definitely a bad move, and I now know less about Western Australian wines than I did before I started. The first ten were all wonderful, the next ten were ok, and after that it was all a blur. I seem to remember that I liked the Fatt Granny –
but whether it was just the name I enjoyed, I have no idea.