Day 3: Perth, WA
Nau Mai
Yesterday we travelled far to the west to play in the great and remote city of Perth.
It was the third most remote city in the world we decided at some point in the day. That was Gabe’s piece of trivia that we were lucky enough to receive, and we took it with little scepticism as he seemed to be recalling the information with great confidence. Challenge this fact if you dare.
It could also be that he said Perth was the second most remote city and that Auckland was the most remote. I could have easily misremembered most of the conversation with how tired I was yesterday.
The day began with beautiful clear skies above Adelaide. The streets around our hotel resonated with the energy of brunch; steamed milk and pulverised avocados would already be marking the beginnings of a day of rest and relaxation for those lucky enough to have a weekend.
There was a Brazilian café called Cozinha around the corner from our hotel, and I headed there for a takeaway bite, sad that I didn’t have time to sit in and enjoy the product from their woodfired pizza oven which was already burning fiercely at half past nine in the morning. I had a veggie focaccia which I can only assume was borne of this fiery brick cave, and it was sliced and turned into a sandwich, filled with roasted capsicum, zucchini, eggplant, salad, and aioli.
We have an embarrassing amount of luggage when we travel these days, and the trend is that we create an enormous delay in the oversize check-in line. The attendant was efficient and kind to us, despite this faux-pas, and even issued us with a luggage bingo card to help us keep track of everything. While this could have easily been a discrete attempt at humiliation we chose to read it as a friendly gesture.
Tristan is pictured here with a very impressive achievement. This is the most pelican cases he has ever fitted onto one airport trolley. I pushed this trolley for a couple of hundred metres and while it was as precarious as any load I have ever encountered it did manage to hold together and get all the way to the check-in counter.
Here we are looking down from 30,000 feet at some of the more interesting and beautiful geographical features of the journey across western Australia. Salt that was once buried deep beneath the soil surface has been mobilised as a result of land clearing and planting of annual cropping species in what is now known as the Wheatbelt Region of southwest Australia. Ancient valleys and rivers have been reduced to chains of salt lakes as a result of the altered hydrology in the ancient aquatic systems of this region.
The reader has probably already figured this out but a good part of touring in Australia is taken up with loading your equipment in and out of a Kia Carnival. This versatile model has taken the large vehicle category of the rental car scene by storm in the last five years, and it is easy to see why with its spacious passenger rows, and its capacious storage bay that is created from a tuneful duet between the low rear wheelbase and efficient folding seats. Our Perthian Kia Carnival was my favourite colour of Kia Carnival, a gleaming and menacing shark skin grey.
Our line of trolleys with a safer and more moderate loading of three pelicans and two small suitcases.
Here is a shot of our venue, the Astor Theatre in the northern Perthian suburb of Mount Lawley. Huge murals graced the brick walls of this old building. I wished that the small side door could have come out of the bell of the trumpet. If you look carefully, you can see that he has another hand playing trumpet inside his hand and trumpet. Parked out front is our Kia Carnival, packed to bursting, and safely guarded by a trio of road cones which the venue staff referred to as witches’ hats.
I loved the interior of the theatre. A calming colour scheme and pleasant geometric patterns that decorate the walls. Punctuating this are a series of great lighting features, sconces and grid shaped ceiling lights, and several of those tall domes above the mezzanine which although they were lit a cranberry juice red had the potential to be done tastefully one day. The floor was plain and felt very sticky underfoot.
The carpet in the green room was not sticky and also was not plain.
The show opened with a solo set from Cello Forrester, from the band Womb. I asked Tristan to take a photo from his superior vantage point and he committed 100%
We loaded our Kia Carnival out of the hotel in the morning and then unloaded at Adelaide Airport. We then loaded our new Kia Carnival at Perth Airport. We unloaded at the Astor Theatre and here we are pictured below loading out of the theatre at the end of the show. Finally we loaded into the luggage room of our hotel right before going to bed.
