Work has been extremely hectic of late. A recent week long business trip to Melbourne, followed by a week at home before embarking on my first ever venture over to Perth in Western Australia for another business trip.
I don’t mean my first business trip there, its the first time that I’ve ever been there… how has that happened given that I’m almost sixty years of age?!
I can tell you one thing, its odd reaching the two hour mark of the flight over to Perth and realising that you still have over two hours left before reaching the destination, previously the longest flight within Australia that I’ve been on is Sydney to Brisbane, approximately two hours long.
In preparation I needed to ensure that I had plenty of content downloaded to my phone, which essentially means as many Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes required to get me to Perth.
I decided to travel over on a Sunday so that I would be well rested for the week of meetings, and although I had intended to shoot on the Sunday afternoon, I just wasn’t feeling it after a long flight and cab ride into Perth from the airport, so I checked into my accommodation and chilled out for a bit, before heading out locally to see what was on offer for food.
I noted that Nene Chicken is also in Perth, often a favourite of mine when I’m in the Sydney CBD. I didn’t get Nene for dinner, almost though.
Before long the evening began to set in so I decided to draw the curtains, take a shower and watch something before going to bed.
The accommodation was great, apart from the fact that there was no screen sharing option on the tv’s, therefore it was either free-to-air tv or watch something on my phone.
Now, I promise you that both my wife and I categorically do not watch Married At First Sight (MAFS), however when I turned the tv on, bang, there it was.
Did I immediately change the channel? No, I did not… there was a juicy argument going on with one of the couples and I wanted to see how it turned out!
The Monday was very warm. Business hours came and went and not too long after getting back to my room I gathered my camera bag and headed into the CBD for what was going to be one of only two days of shooting, given the weather forecast later in the week and work commitments.
Growing up in Sydney and also living in Melbourne for six years it is common knowledge that the other major cities within Australia are nowhere near as busy, and therefore I knew that Perth was going to be much less hectic and dare I say it, perhaps more of a challenge to make something interesting enough.
Forget that, because whilst it is obviously not as busy as Sydney and Melbourne, the CBD is heavily populated during and at the end of business hours, and very much has an energy associated with it.
Some people required an umbrella to help escape the warm day!
From what I could see the most densely populated areas of the city were within four or five blocks, a combination of long main streets and also pedestrian malls which made for great opportunities to capture light falling on people at intersections, from above walkways etc, like this colour picture taken from an overhead walkway and looking down on people through a translucent glass canopy.
From a different section of the same overhead walkway I noticed beautiful light creating a strip effect across the ground, allowing me to try and strategically take pictures of people as they moved in and out of the light.
Much like Sydney and Melbourne, the Perth CBD has many beautiful and historic buildings, such as the Post Office building which was built between 1911 and 1923.
There is also an abundance of modern architecture and colour within the city, including beautiful wall paintings which look stunning against the late afternoon glow.
“It’s a long way to the shop if ‘ya wanna sausage roll!” (Acca-Dacca)
I have no idea what this flavoured tea thing is, however the shops that sell it are always full of customers. I was almost knocked over by a delivery guy trying to take some pictures of one!
There is no shortage of impatient people here, much like all of the other major cities.
They weren’t rude, they were simply in a hurry to get onto transport and make their way home.
I did make my way back into the city on another day, however it was extremely cloudy and a little drizzly. I like the idea of rain in pictures, however the conditions just didn’t lead to interesting pictures… well, not to me anyway.
So, after the weather being warm for most of the time I was there, the forecast for the day of my flight home was for Perth to have their wettest day in five months, and a heavy storm to rip through the city… wonderful, NOT!
After boarding was delayed until approximately forty minutes after the scheduled departure time, we moved out toward the aircraft and saw just how wet and wild it was out on the tarmac.
I was almost drenched just trying to board the plane, however we made it on and strapped ourselves in for one hell of a ride!
We sat there for quite some time, and the front cabin door remained open.
Because of the residential landscape in and around Sydney Airport we have an 11pm curfew. No sooner had I wondered about whether we could beat the curfew or not, the Captain announced that we were ready to taxi out for departure, however we were sixteenth in the cue, and even if we wanted to leave, there was no way of beating that curfew!
In all my years of flying I have never experienced a cancelled flight.
Perth: “hold my beer!”
We disembarked, waited on a line for almost one hour to receive details of the rescheduled flight plus emergency accommodation details, and then it was back in a cab and back into the city for one more night.
After the hectic work week and all of the airport shenanigans I was not interested in trying to shoot more pictures… time for an early dinner and some good rest.
The next day, beautiful weather and an uneventful long flight back home to Sydney.
So, in the end it was a pretty eventful first visit to Perth. I hope that the next visit is a holiday with my wife, to see some of the beautiful places that Western Australia has to offer, particularly south of Perth.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the west, and I was pleasantly surprised by how vibrant and energetic the CBD was, making for a very productive walk around wth my camera.
Thank you for reading the blog, I really appreciate it.
Which camera/s did I take? Only one, the Fujifilm X100VI this time.
Rog.