Perth

WA or Western Australia is the largest state in Oz and Perth is the capital. This will be my first official Couch Surfing experience and I will stay will Valerie. She lives in a small artsy house with great gardens in the community of Kwinana (they should change the spelling to Quinnana LOL).

When I arrived into Perth airport, it was like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds". There were hundreds of these cute parrots making such a raucous, it freaked me out for a minute and I had to stop in my tracks as I could not see anything. Then suddenly they would fly from tree to tree. That was some welcome.

Vals friend Gary (Froggy) picked me up. Vals house has beautiful gardens all around and you can hear magpies in the morning and Kookaburras in the late afternoon. We relax with a cuppa and get to bed early as we will head to the mining town of Kalgoorlie tomorrow to visit an old friend of theirs named Peter.

KAL

Kalgoorlie is a 5 hour drive east of Perth. We passed farms and beautiful wildflowers and cute little towns. The Australia landscape is completely different from the states. There are over 500 species of Eucalyptus trees, here they are called “Gum” trees, ranging in colors from almost white to deep salmony brown.

In Kal, they have the “Superpit”, even though it sounds like the ultimate BBQ spot, it is actually a HUGE hole in the earth where they mine gold. This is the second largest yielding mine in the world. The town itself looks like something out of an old American western and has a famous "red light" district.
Peter is a social worker who works with Aboriginal teenagers and he makes a “cheeky” little lamb chop. The whole weekend that was the word “cheeky” describing everything from attitude to drinks.