Learnin’ In The Rain

June 10, 2025

A slightly chilly and windy start to the day with an early morning run beside the river, but what a pearler of a sunrise. It sure is good to be alive! I happily plodded along looking at the golden sky putting on a spectacle. Once it had lightened up, I took in some of the other sculptures and public art along the path and in the parks of South Perth. It really is a great spot.

We headed across the river for another day of looking around and things began to crack up with the clear sky replaced with grey and threatening rain, so we decided to take our exploring inside. First stop was The Perth Mint with a tour and look through the exhibition. We listened to some info from our tour guide, read some info in the exhibition and looked at various nuggets of gold. So…here are some fun facts:

* Perth Mint is the oldest mint in Australia and used to mint some of our currency until the Canberra Mint came along. Our currency is now produced there and the Perth Mint now produces commemorative coins as well as buying and selling gold.

* The Golden Eagle nugget was the biggest gold nugget found in Western Australia. It was found in 1931 by a boy who was prospecting with his dad. He saw something shiny and dug this huge nugget up and shouted to his dad, “Dad, dad, I found a slug.” A slug was the term used on the goldfields for a small piece of gold, so the young fella was smart to shout that he’d found a slug rather than draw attention to the fact he’d found an absolute whopper!

* Herbert Hoover spent time on the Western Australian goldfields and eventually founded a company that went on to become Rio Tinto. He then went on to become the 31st president of the United States!

As we wandered through the exhibition, we could also weigh ourselves to find out what our weight was worth in gold and what that worth would be with the current gold price. Steve was quite pleased to discover he was worth $18,328,375. I came in at chump change of $7,926,000!

By the time we left the Mint, the rain had really started to come down, so after a quick bite to eat, we went in search of some refuge and more indoor exploring, so we took ourselves to the Museum of Western Australia. 

This was a fantastic museum and well worth the visit. They had such interesting exhibits and it doesn’t matter how many times we might see similar things in other museums, I guess each curator has their own take on things so we always end up learning something new, or learning things from a new perspective. There were the exhibits you’d expect, such as the natural world and world wars and so on, but these had really different and interesting exhibits or perspectives on events. Then there were completely different things like an exhibit on “Love and Loss” and some items on display that we’d never seen, such as a mummified Tasmanian Tiger. These were common in W.A. apparently until about 3,200 years ago and were wiped out when dingoes became prevalent. The one on display had fallen down an 11 metre vertical shaft, had survived the fall but then unfortunately couldn’t get out so had died down there and become mummified. We had never seen an intact, fully formed Thylacine before. Poor little thing, but fascinating. 

We also learned another interesting story from a First Nations lady on a screen, giving some historical information. When James Stirling, an early Governor in Western Australia was travelling down the Swan River, he encountered a group of Aboriginal people and he told them he wanted to camp in the area. They offered him a campsite and as was their custom, when a campsite was offered it became yours until you left. But Stirling didn’t leave. So that piece of land is the only land in Australia that was ceded by First Nations people and the University of W.A. now stands on that land. Incredible.

As the day went, there were breaks in the rain and we roamed around the city but then the rain continued to come down and it was an on-off grey and wet day, but we still got in some interesting time in the city of Perth. So far, here are some of my impressions of Perth and surrounds:

1. It’s quiet. For a capital city, it doesn’t feel like hustle and bustle and busy and noise. Even in the streets of the CBD it’s not noisy. This may be in part due to the fact there seems to be a lot of EVs and Hybrid cars around, but whatever the reason, there aren’t huge volumes of traffic and we can easily just stroll across streets in the city, without heaps of traffic whizzing past.
2. People are friendly and polite. People on the bus say “thank you” to the bus driver and “hello” and “good afternoon” to the driver. Many of the bus drivers welcome passengers on board with a smile or a “hello”. From the bus I watched a man walk up to a homeless man on the street and hand him a $50 note. People calmly and politely stand back in queues for the bus or train and let other people on in front of them. When we were waiting to get on the ferry across the river and passengers were getting off, I saw a man dressed in all black, with black beard and dark wrap around sunglass suddenly go running down the ferry platform! What was he up to? Well, he ran off to pick up a chip packet that was blowing away in the wind, retrieved it and then walked off to put it in a rubbish bin. Cars stop for pedestrians, even if it’s not a pedestrian crossing. They just spot a pedestrian waiting to cross and stop and wave them across. The place just has a calm, friendly and polite vibe about it. 
3. There’s lots of First Nations history about. There are references to it everywhere, with information stands, or language or art work. It’s the opposite in Tasmania, with next to no mention of that history, whereas here it’s just woven into the landscape of the city, which is great.
4. The public transport is fantastic. It’s easy to use and even the buses are colour coded! You need to go from one place to another and the bus route is colour marked on the map and you hop on that colour bus! Easy. The trains and ferries are easy to use. All the public transport in the CBD is free and the free zone is much bigger than in other places we’ve been. Trams are free in the CBD in Melbourne too, but here the zone spans quite a distance. Every Sunday all public transport from buses to trains and ferries are all free right across the city. 
5. It’s really bike friendly. There are designated cycle paths everywhere, lots of bike parking at train stations and easy to get on and off trains and ferries with bikes. Interestingly though, there are no bike share stations anywhere, so nowhere in the city to hire a bike and ride around and then leave it at another location. The infrastructure is really well set up for cycling though. 
6. There are a lot of British accents around! This is obviously a place that Brits like to either visit or relocate to. 

So it’s no surprise that we are really loving our time here so far. We haven’t explored Perth before, so it’s great to see new places and learn new things. Today we still managed that, despite the rain. Neither of us can hold a tune, so we refrained from singin’ in the rain and took to learnin’ in the rain instead, with some interesting stories at the Mint and Museum. A top day. Time now to go and stop Steve from twirling around a lamp post with an umbrella. Sorry Big Fella, I love ya, but you ain’t no Gene Kelly!