Australia

New Norcia Hotel.
The weather in New Norcia [New-Norcia-travel-guide-156468] cleared and we were finally able to admire the exterior of the town's buildings.

Driving down from new Norcia to Perth [Perth-travel-guide-156950] Airport, we had a couple of hours to kill. We called into McDonald's for free internet and realised that our flight was delayed ... so we killed some time at the nearby mall.

Kim had bought an expensive (by my standards) Tissot watch in KL airport while departing ... an impulse decision which I wasn't comfortable with. In the mall (and later at Perth airport) he compared the KL airport price with the Australian prices ... the price at KL airport was half the Ozzie price! The difference was enough to pay for eight of the nine economy class flights flown during this holiday! Is that amazing or what!?!?!

You've probably heard of happy endings in a massage ... but this is truly a happy ending to his travels!

In the Abbey Church. Unless you’re close-up, some parts look like chalk paintings. But in fact they’re layers of different coloured plasters ... scraped off to form the design ... called “sgrafitto”.
The 5am arrival into Perth [Perth-travel-guide-156950] meant that we'd have trouble resting our sleep-deprived heads in a hotel unless we paid for the night before. Because of this, we drove to New Norcia [New-Norcia-travel-guide-156468], less than 2 hours outside of Perth.

For a combination of reasons, we still arrived at New Norcia Hotel too early at 8am ... but were fortunate enough to get a room straight away.

We took a tour of this historic monastic town in the afternoon. It was founded by a Spanish Benedictine monk in 1846 to establish a mission for aboriginal people. It eventually expanded to include several schools, including some for posh whites (which subsidised the missionary work for the aboriginals).

Today it is home to 14 monks ... they own the whole town and employ about 90 people in various trades, businesses and the visitors centre. It is also home to European design and arts held in the various buildings.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't the best for our visit. Also, the famed New Norcia bakery with its wood-fired oven was closed ... the solo baker likes to take Mondays and Tuesdays off!

With the 5 hour time difference between Auckland and Perth I was out of the hostel at 7am and caught up with a friend Carla for a juice at 8:15! With a bit of wandering around to follow, I checked out of the hostel by the required time of 10am and spent most of the day in Fremantle [Fremantle-travel-guide-153437].

Fremantle is a lovely historic port town which is now effectively a suburb. It is hard to believe a laid back location like that was home to all the rarara of the America's Cup about 20 years ago.

We bunked with a crew friend at the Hyatt ... but not without a quick visit to the Casino where we joined up to their rewards programme to get cheap meals!

As a solo traveller in Perth [Perth-travel-guide-156950], I had to relive my youth at the backpackers ... it was too expensive in a hotel for one person. It was good to know that I can still feel at home in shared accommodation with shared facilities ... it will be necessary to do this again when we undertake travel to expensive Western Europe in the future.