More Views: Ocean to Ocean

I've now finished posting the set of photos covering our trip on the Indian-Pacific railway, which involved leaving Perth on the 12th of October, with a brief and under-lit visit to Kalgoorlie that evening. Kalgoorlie being a mining town where the main sights on a coach tour are a giant hole in the ground (sadly under-lit while we were there - apparently they'd had a minor landslip, so the usual round-the-clock work was cut back) and the red light district.

On the 13th, we passed a full-scale airport with a staffing level in single figures, crossed the Nullarbor Plain, and stopped in the ghost town of Cook. Then, on the 14th, we reached Adelaide - early in the day, but still a bit late, so we took only a flying coach tour of the city with limited opportunities for photography through rain-streaked coach windows. It looks like a pleasant sort of city, going purely by the central area, even if the statue of the founder has its back to visitors, and the local habit of laying claim to Don Bradman seems to lead to heckling if one mentions it anywhere else in Australia.

Later in the day, still running late, we had only a few minutes in the remote mining town of Broken Hill - just time to get a few photos from the station platform. Finally, on the 15th, we descended from the Blue Mountains (nice views) through small town like Medlow Bath, into Sydney, from where we were set to drive down to visit family.

Yes, it was quite a trip

Views of Perth

Next up in the photo uploading to Flickr; our couple of days in Perth, from our arrival by air to our departure by train.

It's an attractive city, in ways that I hope that the pictures hint at. And we knew we'd reached Australia when, on our first morning there, we were woken by a weird raucous noise that, when I was conscious, I identified as a kookaburra.

Missed seeing: the art gallery (closed in the time we were there), much of the outskirts. Saw: the Mint (founded as an outpost of the Royal Mint, to provide the Empire with coinage courtesy of Western Australian gold, and the big thing about a visit there is the demonstration of molten gold pouring - essentially a fireworks display, but with really expensive fireworks), the museum with a fine collection of meteorites, the botanical gardens, the bell tower...