Jet lag: Gary and I are doing amazingly well. In fact, Beth and Dan are feeling kind of "jealous" that we have adapted so well! We are absolutely fine during the day, although to be fair we have been on the move most days. I have a feeling that if we had just "vegged" out for a day or two, we would have slept most of the time. I usually start nodding off around 9:00 p.m., but try to stay up until 10 or so. Two pages in my book, and I am zonked! Then we sleep until 7 or 8 in the morning. It's really been great.
Cost of living: It's very expensive to live here; things generally cost about twice as much as in the U.S. However, the minimum wage is $17.00 per hour! One thing good about that is when you go out to eat or stay in a hotel, you never tip your servers or housekeepers. On the other hand, when you go out to eat, there is no incentive for the servers to "take good care" of you, so you're pretty much ignored until you get their attention--once you place your order, that is. Dan and Beth have gotten used to that and now find it rather annoying in the states when the servers keep asking all the time if you need anything else!
Also, just FYI: tax is included in the price of everything you buy; what you see is what you pay. What a great concept! And the smallest coin is 5 cents.
Back to Friday:
Beth and Dan were working so Gary and I headed to Freemantle. Located about 10 miles southwest of Perth, Freo (as the locals call it) is a popular place to go and is often called Western Australia's second capital. It's right on the Indian Ocean, and there is a lot of shipping that goes on around there. There are lots shops and restaurants and several historic places.
We visited the Round House, Freemantle's oldest public building and first gaol (pronounced "jail"). But it had only eight cells, so was quickly too small. Underneath the Round House is the "Whaler's Tunnel," which was cut through the rock to drag whales through, a great source of sustenance to those living here in the 1800s. The Round House is located at one of the highest points in Freemantle. At 1:00 each afternoon, the Freemantle Volunteer Heritage Guides (FVHG) raise flags each day and fire off a small cannon. This practice began in the early 1900s as a method of keeping everyone's watches aligned (and therefore keeping 'order' in the expanding colony.) If "guests" are watching, one of them is asked to fire off the cannon, and on Friday Gary got to do it (the volunteer once visited Peoria, Illinois).
We then toured the Freemantle Prison. This prison was built in 1858 by some of the 10,000 convicts transported to Freemantle from Britain. It's the biggest jail ever constructed in the southern hemisphere, and housed prisoners until 1991! Even then, the prisoners had only a bucket in their cells for their personal use and were allowed to take showers only three times a week, 4 minutes each. The conditions were pretty awful. One of the privileges that prisoners earned was that of painting their cells, and there are many cells with amazing paintings. (Apparently, the last six months that prisoners were housed there, they were given free rein in painting their cells, and some of them cannot be shown to the public, as you can probably imagine!)
We also spent a little time at the Shipwreck Galleries, where original timber and treasures from the "Batavia," a famous Dutch shipwreck, are on display. Beth and Dan joined us for dinner that evening in Freemantle, then we took the train back home again. A good day!
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