Hi, everyone!

This past week, I managed to finally visit Omeo Wreck, Waterman’s Bay, and made a return visit to King’s Park. I managed to fit a lot in around work! I would say I haven’t had much time for relaxing, but that’s not true. I’ve been working in the evenings a lot lately, so I just kinda chill out during the day. I’ll exercise, make brunch, meditate, etc. And this week, I went to King’s Park before work.

Kings Park

My first two weeks in Perth, I spent a lot of time at Kings Park but I haven’t been back much since. One morning before work, I decided to go on a little hike. Honestly, I was searching for snakes hahaha. Not that I want to get bit by one, but I just have a feeling that I will see one in Kings Park one day. Just a hunch.

It’s easy to get a little lost in Kings Park. Being the largest inner city park in the world, it’s quite large. Go down a side trail, and suddenly you feel you’re deep in the bush, away from anybody else. I only bumped into two people while hiking the side trails and I think I was there for two hours.

Along the way, I saw a couple of kookaburra which are always a treat. Remember them from my first post? They are such cool birds and I love the noises they make.

I saw a number of butterflies. There was a pair of them dancing around and around one another – in a sort of courtship, I’m sure. Butterflies always remind me of my mom and my maternal grandmother for some reason so it was nice to see them.

I also heard some scurrying in the brush, which I’m assuming were skinks. I know, I know, all I do in these posts is talk about skinks haha. Where I haven’t seen snakes since being in Australia, I’ve certainly seen LOTS of skinks. I’ll talk about a particularly spooky one of them later.

Before long, I decided it was time to head back home since I had errands to run and wanted chill time before work. The next adventure would be Omeo Wreck.

Omeo Wreck

I’d been wanting to check out Omeo Wreck since before coming to Australia, so I was glad I finally managed to get there. I invited Kory as well. He hadn’t snorkeled in a long time, and had bought a snorkeling mask for when I first went to Mettam’s Pool – although, didn’t use it at the time. I was excited for him to snorkel!

The trip there wasn’t too bad. We hopped on the Fremantle Line from the city center and then transferred to a bus. Unfortunately, the bus was very late as some service routes were apparently affected by a bushfire nearby.

But then, we were there!

The shipwreck has been there for over 100 years. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting it to look like, but shipwrecks always are kind of scary to me in theory. Like Kory mentioned, maybe because of the shark that lives in a shipwreck in Finding Nemo?

I think shipwrecks are ghostly things – there is a haunting about them.

Kory had wondered aloud if we would be able to see any parts of the shipwreck above water, and I was like “no,” but I was wrong! You could see various parts of the ship popping out of the water.

The shipwreck itself has been covered in seagrass. It no longer resembles a ship, aside from the bits of it popping out of the water. It has been reclaimed by nature.

The water wasn’t too cold, so I was really excited to get in. But alas, the water was quite murky – an unfortunately common trend for me here in Perth – and it freaked me out a little. Kory was having issues with his mask and snorkel and didn’t end up staying in very long. I don’t think he enjoyed it very much haha which is a shame because I’d love to have a snorkel buddy who enjoys being underwater the way I do.

I went in the water a few times throughout the day but unfortunately there weren’t too many different types of fish there. Mostly, there were puffer fish and there was also one of those large fish I saw at Rottnest on my birthday. I saw some very small jellyfish, too, but I wasn’t sure if they were deadly so every time I saw one, I quickly jerked away from it. Kory later told me they don’t have deadly jellyfish in Perth.

Omeo Wreck also has a bunch of intentionally submerged dive items to look at along the way. The area is actually called the Coogee Maritime Trail – so you snorkel along the trail and the wreck itself is the main attraction. Because of the murky water, I didn’t want to snorkel the rest of the trail. The wreck itself had some patches where it was clear, so that’s where I felt safest.

When I got out of the water at one point, I wanted to see if there were any other snorkeling spots nearby and sure enough, Ammo Jetty was a 30min walk away so we walked over to check it out, in hopes that the water was calmer.

At one point, we saw a bobtail lizard crossing the trail. I couldn’t make out what it was at first, but then Kory called out what it was (he mistakenly called it a blue tongue which it is not haha). It crawled away into thick brush before I could get a picture, but you should google it. Its tail looks like its head, I imagine as an evolutionary advantage to confuse predators. I was excited to see it.

Before we got to Ammo Jetty, we heard someone calling “Help! Help me!” from the water. We went to see what was up. Three people went into the water to save the guy. Kory and I speculated what it was – did he get bitten by a shark, or stung by a stringray? Was he stuck in a riptide? His saviors got to him very quickly and with no issue, so it wasn’t a riptide. We waited until they brought him to shore. He was slightly limping but had all his limbs intact so I am speculating that he stepped on a stingray and it stung him. The ocean is dangerous, y’all!

Unfortunately, Ammo Jetty itself was a bust. The waves were very powerful so after hanging out for a second, Kory and I went back home.

Waterman’s Bay

I was off work yesterday, so I got up early with the intention to – you guessed it, snorkel! I’m sorry, dear reader, but now that it’s warmer out, I’ll probably be spending a lot of my free time in the water and at the beach. It will be getting too hot to go on hikes pretty soon.

I had read online that Mettam’s Pool would be very murky for the foreseeable future since the city dumped a bunch of sand on the shore to compensate for a receding shoreline at that location. I decided to see it for myself.

Plenty of people were out snorkeling, so I was hopeful… but I don’t know what the hell they were doing because the water was so murky, I literally couldn’t see anything at all.

Bummed out, I walked along the waterfront to see if there were some clear patches. There are a number of snorkeling spots between Scarborough beach and Hilary’s Boat Harbour, so I felt optimistic. After passing Mettam’s Pool, Hamersley Pool, and North Beach, I wasn’t feeling good. The waves were strong and looking at the water from a higher elevation, I could see the sand swirling around the water.

My last resort was Waterman’s Bay and I’m so glad I decided to go there. The water was still murky, but there were patches of clarity throughout.

I didn’t see a large variety of fish, but what I did see was a giant school of white fish. There had to have been hundreds of them swimming all around. If not hundreds, at least well over a hundred. My vision was obscured by these fish.

I met with some other snorkelers and decided to venture further out where the water gets deeper in hopes that it would be clearer the further we got from shore, but to no avail. As mentioned before, I do not like to be in murky water, and the visibility didn’t get any better the further out we were so I went back to the shallow areas.

I also saw some puffer fish and one really cute, white bottom feeder whose eyes reminded me of a puppy. I wish I’d gotten a picture of it, but I didn’t bring my GoPro that particular time I went in the water.

I invited my friend and former hostel mate Liisi to join me at the beach. She went snorkeling too. She’d never gone snorkeling before, but she said it felt like a movie. She told me that she let the waves take her to different spots and allowed the scenery unfold before her.

Liisi will be going home to Estonia for the holidays and when she returns to Australia, she’ll be heading south to Albany to join her friend (also named Liisi). It is weird to meet people, form a connection, and then think that there’s a possibility of not seeing them again. I’m glad I was able to see her before she left – and that we were able to meet to begin with. I do hope to head south at some point, so maybe I will meet up with the Liisi’s again one day soon.

All in all, it was a lovely beach day. I got there around 930am and left at 330pm. I am a little sunbunt, but I was pretty good about applying sunscreen throughout the day.

Milky Lane

In the evening, I met up with some other friends who are leaving Perth soon. Lois and Antoine were my first work buddies. My first week at my job, we were assigned the task of organizing one of the jetty sheds (essentially a miniature warehouse with uniforms, extra tables, extra silverware, etc.). We had never hung out outside of work, but I was sad to hear they were leaving Perth and wanted to spend some time with them so I asked if they’d want to get milkshakes.

There’s a milkshake shop right by our job, so we met there. Lois and Antoine are from Paris and had bought a campervan that they drove from Brisbane down to Perth. They’d been to the Great Barrier Reef, a bunch of national parks in Queensland and Northern Territory. They checked out the northern side of Western Australia – all in their campervan! It’s really impressive. And they’re only 26 and 24 years old!

While in Perth, they’ve been really keen on work, work, work. They said their best week, they worked upwards of a 70 hour week. And I think I have been working a lot! They helped me to keep in perspective that the work part is only temporary. I am only planning on working for another two or three months and then moving along. I think I will have saved enough in Australia, where I will no longer need to work while here. So three more months of work in order to have freedom for the rest of my time in Australia and then Asia? I think I can do that.

Lois and Antoine are leaving Perth to head down to Adelaide, and then to Sydney for New Years. They plan to stay there until February, where they then will be heading back to France due to Antoine returning to his job.

It was really nice to talk with them outside of work hours and to get to hear their travel journey in Australia. I asked them what the next five years looks like for them. The answer was to “be happy,” which is a pretty damn good answer.

When I was leaving Chicago, I was asking all my loved ones that question. I don’t expect everyone to have their lives planned out, but knowing I wouldn’t be seeing people for a while, it seemed like a cool question. Sort of a snapshot in time of what their futures might possibly look like, at that moment.

Lois, Antoine, and I had a lovely chat over milkshakes. They showed me their campervan and then parted ways. At times, I’m really grateful for social media because we’ll be able to stay in touch, despite the distance.

Reflections

It has now officially been three months that I’ve been in Australia – and I haven’t seen a huntsman spider OR a snake. What a gip!

I’m glad I’ve started my journey here in Perth. I’ve met some great people, gone on amazing hikes, eaten lots of good food, and now that it’s warmer, have been able to go snorkeling on my days off work. The plan remains the same – to stay here until March, with the Björk concert being the catalyst for me to move to the next location (TBD).

As it has gotten warmer out, I’ve realized how nice it is to be in an apartment that isn’t old as shit. In Chicago, my apartment had the most awful insulation, so anything about 80 degrees, I was SWEATING and miserable. It has been 96 degrees (Fahrenheit) here already and I’ve been able to sleep at night with just a fan and the window open.

Oh! And I also saw a whole bunch of brown jellyfish one day when on my boat at work. It was so cool to see such a huge cluster of them.

In talking about heat… I was watching the Zac Efron show Down to Earth and their second season is all filmed in Australia. At one point they talked about the terrible wildfires here from 2019-2020. It was called the Black Summer.

One day at work, a guest asked me where I’m from. When I said Chicago, he goes, “Oh, Chicago!” and proceeds to simulate a machine gun sound – referring to both the gangsters in Chicago and also gun violence. It was funny, but also a sad representation of my city haha.

I also forgot to mention… when I was walking to Waterman’s Bay yesterday, I bumped into the largest skink I’d seen yet. It had an orange face and was GIGANTIC. At first, I thought it was maybe a snake. I stopped dead in my tracks and considered going back the way I came from. As I stood still, it slowly snuck away back into the bush and I moved along.

Art of the Week

This was the last piece of paper in my sketchpad so I’ll have to go and get another one this week. Hopefully I get it in time for next week’s blog post!

That’s all for now! I work the next several days, but luckily I have a LONG weekend! Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off. I haven’t had that many days off in a row since I’ve started working here, so I’m looking forward to it. Some weeks, I only get one day off. On Sunday, I’m going back to Rottnest to spend an entire day (7am – 9pm!!!) but I’m not sure what I will do on Monday and Tuesday yet. I was thinking of taking a trip down south, or maybe joining a tour that goes four hours east to Wave Rock (which is this huge rock wall that looks like a wave, I guess?). Stay tuned!

Thank you all for reading! If you enjoy these posts, I’d love it if you shared them on social media! As mentioned in last week’s post, I’d really like to somehow make a job out of this. Whether it’s wildlife photography or travel blogging… it would be a dream come true.

Sending you all my love!