...
I really don't like big cities at all, but there's something good about them: There's always something to do, even if it is only going to the Internet Cafe and checking out the mails.
Perth is a really big city, in every dimension. From East to West it stretches for an amazing 90 km, and from North to South another 40. That's more than double the size of London but with only one third of the Population. As it is the capital of Western Australia (which is bigger than Germany and the UK together), more than 70 per cent of the Western Australian population live in Perth or its suburbs, and that's only 1.7 million people!
Perth itself hasn't got a lot of history as it has only been established in 1829, but there are quite a few interesting cultural places to see in the city. For example the Western Australian Museum, which has very good displays on a couple of topics. The most interestingThe Isla one was the display about Aboriginal Culture in Western Australia and the so-called "Stolen Generation". For a period of more than fifty years (between the 1920s and the 1970s) the British Colonialists established the practice that every Aboriginal child was to be removed from his family and brought into Catholic Missions to be raised as white people. Some even were used as child-slaves.
The museum was huge. Other displays were the natural historic and the colony life display. But most interesting was a room with sveral works of Film and Arts students. For example there was a cube with several windows. When you looked inside it, there was a hologram of a dancing bear. When you moved to another window, the bear turned to you again. Another one was a projector, which projected nothing but light on a wall, but if you started to play shadow games, it showed teeth and tongues and such things extending from your hands. That was amazing.
The most awesome thing was that you could choose what you wanted to pay for the entry as it is completely on a donation basis.
On the plaza in front of the museum is another splendid display of nearly a hundred pictures from Yann-Arthus Bertrand. Some of you might know him as the author of his "Earth from Above" books. Bertrand has been everywhere around the world to take some amazing pictures of very odd things, like a shipwreck in the middle of a desert or huge meteorite craters or things like that. There was even one Picture from Germany, from the Love Parade in Berlin. He not only uses his pictures to show odd things but to remind people of how big their impact on nature is and what should be changed.
But there's more things to see and do in Perth than just the museum. For example, Perth has very beautiful city beaches. I went to Scarborough Beach one day with some friends (and got badly sunburnt ...) and to Rottnest Island. Rottnest Island is a small island off the coast, about 9 km long and 3 km broad. I went there by myself with the first ferry in the morning and rented a bike. There are lots of beautiful beaches on the island, and I regretted not to have brought my snorkel gear with me, as there were great opportunities to spot some nice corals and fishes.
But what I most wanted to see on the Island were the Quokkas, a very rare species of mammals which only exists on two islands in Australia. They look a bit like rats, and that's why a dutch captain gave the island it's name. In fact, they look a bit like a crossing between rats and kangaroos (their body looks like that of a big rat, but they move like kangaroos), but very cute. They used to live on the mainland too, but due to the introduction of cats and foxes by the British they don't exist there any more.
That was just a small selection of the things to see and do here in Perth, but I have to stop now. Still lotys of things are waiting for me to be discovered. See you later!
Ingo
Perth is a really big city, in every dimension. From East to West it stretches for an amazing 90 km, and from North to South another 40. That's more than double the size of London but with only one third of the Population. As it is the capital of Western Australia (which is bigger than Germany and the UK together), more than 70 per cent of the Western Australian population live in Perth or its suburbs, and that's only 1.7 million people!
Perth itself hasn't got a lot of history as it has only been established in 1829, but there are quite a few interesting cultural places to see in the city. For example the Western Australian Museum, which has very good displays on a couple of topics. The most interestingThe Isla one was the display about Aboriginal Culture in Western Australia and the so-called "Stolen Generation". For a period of more than fifty years (between the 1920s and the 1970s) the British Colonialists established the practice that every Aboriginal child was to be removed from his family and brought into Catholic Missions to be raised as white people. Some even were used as child-slaves.
The museum was huge. Other displays were the natural historic and the colony life display. But most interesting was a room with sveral works of Film and Arts students. For example there was a cube with several windows. When you looked inside it, there was a hologram of a dancing bear. When you moved to another window, the bear turned to you again. Another one was a projector, which projected nothing but light on a wall, but if you started to play shadow games, it showed teeth and tongues and such things extending from your hands. That was amazing.
The most awesome thing was that you could choose what you wanted to pay for the entry as it is completely on a donation basis.
On the plaza in front of the museum is another splendid display of nearly a hundred pictures from Yann-Arthus Bertrand. Some of you might know him as the author of his "Earth from Above" books. Bertrand has been everywhere around the world to take some amazing pictures of very odd things, like a shipwreck in the middle of a desert or huge meteorite craters or things like that. There was even one Picture from Germany, from the Love Parade in Berlin. He not only uses his pictures to show odd things but to remind people of how big their impact on nature is and what should be changed.
But there's more things to see and do in Perth than just the museum. For example, Perth has very beautiful city beaches. I went to Scarborough Beach one day with some friends (and got badly sunburnt ...) and to Rottnest Island. Rottnest Island is a small island off the coast, about 9 km long and 3 km broad. I went there by myself with the first ferry in the morning and rented a bike. There are lots of beautiful beaches on the island, and I regretted not to have brought my snorkel gear with me, as there were great opportunities to spot some nice corals and fishes.
But what I most wanted to see on the Island were the Quokkas, a very rare species of mammals which only exists on two islands in Australia. They look a bit like rats, and that's why a dutch captain gave the island it's name. In fact, they look a bit like a crossing between rats and kangaroos (their body looks like that of a big rat, but they move like kangaroos), but very cute. They used to live on the mainland too, but due to the introduction of cats and foxes by the British they don't exist there any more.
That was just a small selection of the things to see and do here in Perth, but I have to stop now. Still lotys of things are waiting for me to be discovered. See you later!
Ingo
teegernseher82 - 28. Dez, 07:24
