Day 9 of Western Australia began with brunch in a cute neighbourhood called Subiaco, followed by a trip to Kings Park –a massive park that sits next to the Perth CBD. The park contains botanical gardens, grasslands, and native bushland, along with various war monuments and some sweet views of the city and the Swan River. The park is the oldest park in Australia to be established for public use, and (according to Wikipedia) it’s the largest inner-city park in the world at over four square kilometers (Central Park in Manhattan is a bit smaller).
View of the city:
View of the Swan River:
War Memorial:
The Botanical Gardens were particularly interesting because they brought in plants from all over Western Australia and divided them into sections based on location within the state. Keep in mind that Western Australia is massive – it’s roughly the size of Alaska, Texas, and California combined. It’s bigger than Sudan, Greenland, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. The variety of plants they had was particularly impressive. You can even climb some of them...
Notice the Boab tree in the left side of the below picture. It has a fat trunk for storing water with skinny branches on top. It’s related to trees in Africa and Madagascar – a remnant of the time when Australia was connected to those regions.
I also learned about the Dwellingup Mallee – a species of tree with only one specimen left. Click the photo to enlarge and read the caption:
After our adventures at Kings Park, we headed off to Scarborough Beach for some sun and a swim. I thought Cottesloe was incredible, but I was in for a treat with Scarborough. It was a long, white sand beach that stretched as far as we could see.
The water was particularly rough at Scarborough because a cyclone (hurricane) was out in the Indian Ocean heading toward Australia and churning up the water. We didn’t realize the extent of the effect on the coastline until later on that afternoon when we drove back down to Cottesloe. What was a big, beautiful white sand beach the day before, turned into this:
The rough seas had washed away most of the beach that we had swum at yesterday. Crazy! I imagine that a similar thing happened at Scarborough Beach, but we didn’t notice because we didn’t have the before and after views to compare. Scarborough was a big beach when we were there, but it’s probably much bigger on a normal day. I want to go back and see.
Karen really wanted to watch the sunset from Cottesloe, but the cyclone’s clouds were disrupting our plans.
So we went back to the hotel and Karen found the G spot instead.
It was in the elevator the whole time. Who knew?
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