1st November (3)

Small world!

Visited the Bell Tower in the late afternoon, where eighteen bells are kept, twelve from St Martin in the Fields (London). The ringer was from Sussex and learnt her bell-ringing in Tunbridge Wells.

Small world again.

Whilst watching the aeroplane racing earlier, I bought some lottery tickets from a guy who had spent some time in the UK and played cricket for Billingshurst - a team that Patrick used to cover for his paper, and he knew him!

Jean

1st November (2)

The Red Bull Air Race here at Perth is the eighth and last in a series that’s been taking place around the world. There was a recent event in London, but I’m afraid I was unaware.

There are twelve pilots competing in the series, three from the UK. The “qualifying” races were today, and these sort out the higher performers from the less quick, a little like motor racing.

The pilots have two chances at the course, which is set up with “gates” of inflatable “pylons” floating in the river that the pilots have to fly through - see photo. Yellow ones mark the start, while blue mean the planes can be flown straight through and red ones indicate the pilots must turn the planes to “knife edge”. Another manoeuvre is “half Cuban”, where the guys fly straight upwards then describe an arc, before pulling out of the circle and twisting.

The whole thing is timed, but any indiscretions mean extra seconds are added - things like clipping the pylons or flying too high are penalised. We saw three pylons demolished, and guys on jet skis are sent out to repair them.

Jean

Saturday 1st November 2008

The big event of the weekend here in Perth is the Red Bull Air Race. Never heard of it? No, neither had we, but we've learnt quite a lot now, and it explains why there are no hotel beds left in Perth - good job our reservation wasn't cocked up here!

I walked from the hotel to the venue on the other side of the River Swan, over three kilomtres, over the Narrows Bridge, from which this picture was taken. The local boats spread out across the river to obtain a good view of proceedings. Dave, in the meantime, was collecting a bike.

Jean

Fremantle prison, which closed in the mid 1990s, is very near the centre of town which is unusual for a gaol but it did not seem to bother the locals much as long as they could look up at the large watchtower and see that all was well.

It housed to to 1,000 long term prisoners at a time in its century or so and there were 44 executions over that period, the last in the mid 1960s when a a serial killer from Perth was hung.

Fire during a serious riot in the 1980s badly damaged two of the sections but the trouble ended after 19 hours. An interesting place built originally by convicts from the UK, now a popular tourist attraction, though not apparently with locals.