Perth (reprise)

My aim today was to get back to Perth by early afternoon to allow time to make a couple of visits and do some laundry. I booked myself back into the same hotel I was in before - it was a little tired but basically fine, and I knew there was a guest laundry room and free parking for the car while I unloaded it and sorted out what I was going to do with it (the original plan had been to return it to the hire company immediately but in view of the miserable weather, I decided to hang on to it for the evening - it was too late to return it in time to save any money. On the way north, in heavy rain, I spotted a turn off for Yalgorup National Park and I was reminded of Miranda's suggestion of visiting Lake Clifton. Following the road to the end, I wasn't altogether surprised that mine was the only car in the car park, though at that point, it wasn't actually raining. The purpose of the visit was to have a look at these curious rocks:

which, as you can see, stretch all the way down the shore of the lake - Lake Clifton.

The rocks are thrombolites and are, essentially, alive. They are a type of microbialite and are related to the stromatolites which are found in salt water at Shark Bay further north on the WA coastline. Tiny micro-organisms photosynthesise and, as they do so, they draw calcium carbonate out of the lime-rich lake water and create the rocks you can see. They grow at about 1mm per year.

What is, perhaps, more important is that they have been doing it for a very long time - perhaps 600 million years (not these particular microbialites, but microbialites in general). And, during that 600 million years, as well as fixing calcium carbonate, they have been producing oxygen. It was these little guys who, over the course of millennia, created enough oxygen in the atmosphere of Earth to allow more complex life to evolve.

They may not look like much, but we owe them an enormous debt. And I owe Miranda a debt of thanks for the suggestion.

Anyway, having marvelled at the thrombolites, I set my face resolutely north and made my way "home" to Perth. On the way along the river-side road, I passed the Bell Tower - there was a picture of it on the blog a few days ago and I wanted to see the inside.

The tower was built as a millennium project for the state of Western Australia, and houses a peal of 18 bells (which is a lot!). 12 of the bells were brought from St. Martin in the Fields in London - they had never really sounded right in the clock tower there and there were plans to melt them down when the Australian government heard about them and asked if they might have them instead. They were given to mark the bicentennial of Australia in 1988.

The Bell Tower is, essentially, just that - a very tall tower with a large peal of bells in it, but there is an exhibition showing some of the history of bells and of bell-ringing. The Dutch word for a bell is "klok", and I used to wonder if it was related to the English word "clock" - both commonly being found on church towers after all. Well, it turns out that the relationship is a little more complicated, but not much. It was 13th century Benedictine monks who first started sounding a bell to indicate the correct hours for saying the daily offices of prayer. The Latin for bell is "clocca" from which the English language derived the word for a timepiece while Dutch (and German and French, for that matter) derived the word for a bell. Fascinating, isn't it?

As well as looking at the bells, if you are lucky with the timing, you can hear them. I was lucky – there is a society of change ringers who practise in the tower every day and I happened to be there at the right time. As well as being able to watch the ringers pulling on ropes, there is a video screen showing the bells up in the tower as they react to the ropes.

Change-ringing is a means of ringing all the bells in differing, but related sequences. To ring all the possible combinations of the bells (i.e. all the possible different orders in which the bells can be rung) takes a while. For a small peal of, say, 6 bells, this can take half an hour or so. For 8 bells it is much longer - around 20 hours. According to Wikipedia, to ring every combination of 18 bells would take over 400 million years... (by which stage, the ringers would have terrible headaches, I would imagine). Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the bells as they were swinging – they were taken through glass so there are some reflections, and there is also some blurring because of the speed of the bells. It was still not very bright outside.

Here is a very short clip of the bells:


From the top of the tower you get a lovely view of Perth and the Swan River as it meanders its way down to the sea at Fremantle. It is in turns quite narrow and very broad – I noticed as I was coming back on the ferry from Rottnest that there were places where a short bridge is enough to clear it and other places where it feels like a wide lake. The views would probably be lovelier on a sunny day... Here is a shot of the Town Hall – the tower reminds me very much of the one on the town hall in Rutherglen where I grew up. This one was built, almost inevitably, using convict labour.

This rather grand building is the Governor's House and the State Court:

Having exhausted the rather grey view, I set off for the hotel. I got a much nicer room this time with a view of the river squeezed in between these two mirror-image apartment blocks. I hate to think what they must cost to live in with a swimming pool and tennis court and a fabulous river view

After doing the laundry, I set off (in the car) for King Park. This is a huge park to the west side of the city centre. It is partially formal garden, partially botanic garden and partially wilderness. It also contains one of the city's reservoirs. Here is a view of the river looking south (towards the coast at Fremantle). The buildings on the left are in South Perth a suburb connected by a couple of bridges and a ferry service. You can see how wide the river is on the right and get a feel for how narrow on the left.

This is the city centre – I'm sure it'd look better on a sunny day. It's also look better without the motorway, but I suppose the folk have to get about somehow. According to a programme I heard on the car radio (often there was only one station available so you take what you can get), Perth is now the least desirable of the state capitals in which to live. I find that surprising, but the commentators on the radio put it down to traffic congestion.

The Kings Park also contains the State War Memorial – a reminder that Australian troops fought in both World Wars as well as in Korea and Vietnam.

Finally, I came across this statue:

Which only serves to reinforce the feeling that I'm not really abroad at all. So much of Australia is similar to the UK that it sometimes feels as if I've just driven to some place in England where the architecture is different to the Scottish style but where life is basically the same. Life is not the same here and Australia is not just an offshoot of the UK, but sometimes it's uncannily similar (the people, so far at least, are friendlier though).

I will almost certainly have no internet access until Saturday at the earliest so there probably won't be any updates before then.