Western Australia

We mercifully escaped Christchurch a couple of days after the earthquake and joined dozens of extra people in the check in line at the Qantas counter at the airport. Many of them had no luggage to check in as they were forced to abandon their belongings in quarantined hotels. This was the case for many of our friends and Antarctic co-workers who, to this day, have still not received their baggage.

Qantas had brought in larger aircraft to handle the added passengers and were, as always, VERY free with the disbursement of alcohol which inevitably led to lots of frivolity amongst certain groups of passengers....notably the Australian earthquake clean-up specialists sitting all around us who had been working 3 month stints in Christchurch since the very first quake in September. We gathered from the intensity with which they were downing the chardonnay that they had seen some pretty harrowing things. They were good fun, though, and we had a very entertaining flight to Sydney.

From Sydney, we unfortunately had to transfer from the international to the domestic terminal which is not in walking distance and requires a transit passenger to pay for a shuttle bus. Awful airport. I recommend avoiding it if you can.

From Sydney, we flew across the island continent to Perth, which is roughly the equivalent to flying from NY to LA. After our "excitement" in Christchurch, sleepless nights of aftershocks and series of flights to Perth, we arrived in the evening and were met by a lovely and gentle shuttle driver who whisked us off to our stifling hot backpacker hostel in Fremantle.

We rested for the next 5 days in Fremantle and attempted to acclimatize to the unbearable heat. Day after day of 100 degrees F/38 degrees C was what Lonely Planet calls in it's guidebook to Western Australia: "enthusiasm-depleting heat". Indeed, it took all of our reserves to leave our air-conditioned room and go out for a swim. We did our best, though, and even went for a day of bike riding and snorkeling (disappointing - but then again, maybe I was just "enthusiasm-depleted") at Rottnest Island, which was named by the Dutch after the native quokkas, which they thought to be rats.

Quokkas on Rottnest Island