First Day in Perth

Rottnest Island today, so Megan (my roommate) and I are up nice and early this morning. It turns out that it rained so much yesterday and especially when we were coming home that our pants are still wet from last night. I’m glad I brought an extra pair with me, because otherwise it would be slightly reminiscent of spring break 2007 when we damply traveled around Italy for a week with jeans that never completely dried.

Yesterday our only requirement was to go through an exhibit at the Museum of Western Australia. We met there around 1045 and received our assignments for the trip: to keep a journal (this blog for me), write a two page policy memo about Dog Head rock which we will visit in a little more than a week, and participate in the service learning projects. Our final project, though, is exactly in line with my graduate school choice: design an exhibit for the Museum of Western Australia extending their current exhibit about the Stolen Generation to include the case study of Carrolup. We need to make scholarly choices, write text, select images, create floor plans, and write interpretative guides to promote discussion. While it is a ton of work, it will be a very cool project with which to enter CGP.

After the museum, we souvenir shopped for a little bit which I found very difficult since I have only just gotten here. But in one of the shops, I found a set of shot glasses with all different “parts” of Australian culture on each glass; the last one in the series said “An aboriginal man” with a picture of a dark face and boomerangs and spears. I was shocked. I realize that we might be more sensitive to such overt racism, as the point of this trip is to build cultural bridges with one particular aboriginal tribe, but is that really something that is seen as a marketable part of tourism – a group of people? (Is this what we do to the Amish, as I can’t see people driving through Native American reservations as they do Amish country.)

We also found the grocery store and bought some breakfast provisions – very much like shopping at Sainsbury’s and made me miss London a lot – and then left for Fremantle which is just outside of Perth on the other side of the river. Walked along the river at dusk which was stunning: palm trees to one side, lights reflecting off the Swan on the other. At the train station, one of the station operators tried getting us the best deal possible, which included variously student concessions and a family ticket for five college kids. Finally, he ended up taking this yellow pad of paper out of his pocket and writing us a voucher ticket for 15 of us to travel until 1130 pm. Not bad, but whenever we had the ticket checked, we’d have to present it and then point to our herd – I don’t think it was meant to be used with 15 people!

We had dinner at this brewery in Fremantle which is supposed to be one of the hip places to go, but everyone was about ten years older than us and the wait staff there was very unaccommodating. Two girls left their IDs at the hotel and were outright rejected which is understandable, but the manner in which the lady at the door did so was incredibly rude. She told us to find any table inside and sit down, so the one empty table we found was a huge and a perfect fit for our party of now 12 (one girl didn’t come and the other two went to find food on their own). Turns out that the table was reserved, which caused a huge ruckus and resulted in several more encounters with the rude lady in the red coat. We ended up having some pints and eating outside, which was fine but it was definitely an interesting experience.

We took the train back to Perth at what seemed to be a very late hour, but in fact was only about 10 p.m. As we walked back to the hotel from the train station, it began to downpour, though, making for a very soggy trek home.

Peace,

Jill