Bon Scott

In a park near the waterfront in Fremantle, I stumbled upon this statue. It’s a tribute to Bon Scott, the original lead singer of the band AC/DC. He was born in Scotland, but raised in Freeo.

Later, at the Fremantle prison, his name came up again. As I said, we didn’t have time to tour the jail, but we always make time for gift shops. Numerous copies of a Bon Scott biography were displayed there. When I asked what the connection was, I was told that Scott served three different terms in the prison, for robbery, assault, and one of my favorites, “unlawful carnal knowledge.”

So he wasn’t necessarily the nicest guy in the world, but I bought the bio anyway. Flipping ahead to the end, I read that (SPOILER) he died in 1980 and was buried in Fremantle.

This inspired one of my favorite travel things: a spontaneous non-Frommer’s sanctioned quest. Neither Pipi nor I are huge AC/DC fans, but suddenly signs seemed to be pointing toward a pilgrimage to Bon Scott’s final resting place. I don’t mean that literally, of course, but it actually wasn’t too hard to get to the graveyard. A city bus took us right to the gate, easily visible from the road.

I expected a big Jim Morrison-style scene, but found just the opposite—the grave was impossible to find. I may have been working with outdated information. It doesn’t really matter. I’d only been dimly aware of the man when I woke up that morning, so I can live without completing my quest.

While I can’t say that I have a deep appreciation for Bon Scott’s music, I am appreciative of the fact that he inspired us to have an unusual travel experience. Most visitors to Fremantle have an alfresco lunch and visit the museums. But not too many of them can say they’ve wandered fruitlessly around a suburban cemetery. I may not have closure, but I do have cocktail party chatter.

Fremantle

One other thing we really liked about Perth was Fremantle. “Freeo,” as it’s often called, is a suburb of Perth on the coast of the Indian Ocean. (Perth itself is several miles inland, connected to the sea by the Swan River.)

Approaching Fremantle on the tram, I saw a dolphin frolicking in the river mouth, which seemed to bode well. It was a gorgeous fall day, and the first thing we did was have lunch at a brewpub right on the water. On the way to lunch, we passed through a park full of wild parrots, and I was struck by how odd it is that people pay money to go to zoos in Australia when exotic wildlife is hopping around free.

We also went to a chocolate factory, because every municipality in Australia seems to have one and we felt obligated to explore them all. We spent much more time than we expected to at a museum devoted to shipwrecks. In the early days of international shipping, when the southern continent was hardly more than a rumor to Europeans, traders used to bump into Australia all the time on the way to Indonesia. The western coast is littered with wrecks dating back to the early 17th century, and the Fremantle Maritime Museum has artifacts from many of them. The most impressive is a large section of hull from the most famous Australian wreck, the Batavia, which foundered on a reef in 1629.

Because we had spent so much time looking at skeletons and rusty things at the maritime museum, we found we didn’t have time to tour the Fremantle prison, which is the Alcatraz of Western Australia. We did see a moving art exhibit there devoted to English female prisoners transported to Australia. You hear a lot about the male prisoners who were the first Europeans down under, but less about the women, although there were thousands of them.

We also spent more of the day than we realized we would just walking around the downtown. Fremantle is much smaller than Perth, and a little bit greener. It’s full of Moreton Bay fig trees just like this one. They grow all over coastal Australia, and I really like them. Like Fremantle, they seem to invite relaxation.

Koala Encounter

Caversham also has koalas. Although koala cuddling is legal in Western Australia, this particular park doesn’t allow it. You can, however, pet them, gently, on the flank, with the back of your hand.

I’m not sure why the petting protocol is so weirdly specific, but after the ranger’s spiel, I understood why we weren’t allowed to grab them and squeeze them as we pleased. It’s because koalas get so little nutrition from the only thing they can eat (eucalyptus leaves) that they spend 20 hours a day sleeping to conserve energy. The other four hours are spent binge eating. They’re busy little creatures, and don’t have much left for their fans.

Petting was nice, though. There were six or seven koalas in the enclosure, and the ranger pointed out the one on duty. You’re only allowed to touch one at a time, and the designated object of affection rotates every 15 minutes so no single koala gets too sleep deprived. The dopy, unnamed koala I got to stroke was very docile and very soft, and I could easily have lingered longer than 15 minutes if I weren’t worried that I would send it to the hospital.

(And no, to answer your question, they don’t let you give them water, even though it's all anyone has wanted to do since this picture came out. Apparently koalas normally get enough liquid from the leaves they eat, and rarely drink water.)

The Camera Adds Ten Pounds

That’s Big Bub’s story, and she’s sticking to it.

Big Bub is a hairy-nosed wombat. She’s the star attraction of an afternoon program at the Caversham Wildlife Park in Perth. With park rangers supervising, you’re allowed to approach, and in some cases touch several animals, including a quoll (a small, opossum-size marsupial); a wallaroo (looks like a mini-kangaroo); and a blue-tongued skink (a reptile with a tongue like a sharp-pei).

I arrived in Australia thinking for some reason that wombats are small, maybe the size of chubby cats. So imagine my surprise when they lugged out this furry little sumo wrestler. Hairy-nosed wombats can weigh up to 88 pounds, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Bub were close.

Interestingly, we were told that wombats look chubby, but are mostly muscle because they are basically God’s little tunnel borers. The camera can fool you.

When Kangaroos Attack

Surprisingly, not everyone liked the kangaroos as much as we did.

Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport

We kind of got off on the wrong foot with Perth, but there are a lot of good things about the city, starting with the place we stayed, Miss Maude’s Swedish Hotel. I picked it solely because my Frommer’s Guide mentioned a smorgasbord breakfast, but I didn’t regret it. Pancakes, crepes, cold cuts, cheese, bread, honey, jam, sausages, yogurt, baked beans, muesli, and as much coffee as I could drink were just the highlights. It was by far the best breakfast we had in a country that takes breakfast pretty seriously.

Another great thing about Perth is the Caversham Wildlife Park. This park is like no zoo I’ve ever been to in the United States. You’re allowed to interact with the animals in a way that would never be allowed here—maybe for good reason.

My favorite part of the park was a giant enclosure where you were allowed to mingle freely with kangaroos. There were dozens of them, which you were free to pet and feed. Signs urged you not to over-feed them, not to bother the ones in a roped-off rest area, not to give them anything but the provided pellets, and not to touch the joeys. But I never saw any park staff around enforcing the rules. People did seem to be treating the animals respectfully, but I was surprised at the lack of supervision, and at the fact that we were allowed to stroke and hand-feed wild animals in the first place. (And I did catch one unclear-on-the-concept family trying to feed some kangaroos a sandwich. That can’t be good for them.)

Kangaroos are surprisingly soft. For some reason I thought they would have coarse horse-like hair, but their fur is very plush. I doubt feral kangaroos would be so friendly, but this mob has learned that we are there to feed them, and are not shy about asking for food. If you don’t produce pellets quickly enough (because you’re trying to take their picture, maybe), they will put their little hands on your arm and gently suggest that feeding time is now. Gentle is the word, though. They have teeth but are very dainty about not using them as they snuffle kangaroo food out of your hand.

Feeding the kangaroos was one of my favorite Australia experiences. And I discovered that my Caversham Wildlife Park visit had a lasting effect: Kangaroo meat is at least as common on Australian menus as horsemeat is in Europe. I can eat horse (I know, because I did once, in Italy), but every time I was offered a nice kangaroo steak, I’d think of this one with its paws on my belly, sticking its deer face up into mine, begging for a pellet, and I just couldn’t do it.

(Yes, I’m a big softie. The next time I take a child to a petting zoo, I’ll probably come back a complete vegetarian.)

Perth

By the time we woke up on our last morning on the train, it was clear that we had left the desert and were approaching the coast. The land was considerably more lush, turning to farmland, and we saw some kangaroos. (One was standing in the middle of a field of sheep, looking as though it were trying to blend in.) As the sun came up, we saw a group of hot-air balloons lifting off over the hills outside of town.

Already Perth seemed different from the rest of dusty Western Australia. It soon became clear that Perth is just different, period. We learned on the train that the city is closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney. Perth was founded and to an extent still is populated by people who have made their fortunes in the goldfields. Consequently, Perth, like Kalgoorlie, has a little bit of a wild-west feel to it. Or, as a tattooed, chain-smoking cab driver told me, “We’re a little oker here.” (An “oker” is essentially an Australian redneck. Oh, and the driver was a woman.)

Both Pipi and I noticed independently that there were a large number of walking wounded in our neighborhood, which was close to a shopping district and otherwise seemed respectable. People just seem to hurt themselves in Perth. I got a hint as to how this might be happening our first evening in town. Walking to dinner at about 7pm, we saw a man getting out of a cab who was already falling-down drunk. I know he was falling-down drunk because the first thing he did after getting out of the cab was to fall down. Then he began yelling at the driver, who shouted back, but finally just drove away.

I also, for the first time in my life, saw someone who was literally spitting mad. He was walking down the street with a woman, and something she said must have set him off, because he stormed off across an intersection against the light, alternately swearing at her, shouting blasphemous things at the sky, and expectorating into the street. The light had not yet turned and the woman was still waiting to cross the street legally when I got to the intersection myself. I could hear the mad man, who was halfway down the next block, still yelling and spitting. She looked at me, smiled apologetically, and said, “He’s a little angry today.” I guess I’d be upset, too, if I kept hurting myself all the time.