Perth

March 13
Perth

Technically, I guess I was in Fremantle, the port just outside of Perth, but we’ll title this Perth just the same. Anyways, I’ve been excited for this port for quite a long time now because I have a friend who lives in the area. Shannon, a friend from the first 4 months aboard the Navigator, and I have been talking back and forth somewhat frequently about my visit into Perth, but in usual fashion, we waited till the last minute to try to actually plan something. She’s an army girl so I was hoping for something extreme, preferably gun related. Unfortunately, all those plans fell through and I ended up leaving the ship that morning not having a clue what I’d be doing that day.
We were meant to meet up at the terminal at 9:30 the morning and I got off the ship right around that time to go look for her. I got outside, didn’t see her, and began to wait. I waited for 25 minutes, confused both because she wasn’t there and I hadn’t received an email back from her that morning. At that point I decided to run back on the ship to look up her phone number online – something I should have written down when she first sent it to me. The ship, however, shuts down the internet at embarkation ports, so I ran on to find out I couldn’t get online…foiled. So I grabbed some change from my room and ran back off the ship desperately looking for her, still nothing. Determined to figure out where she was, I left the terminal and started to walk into the city where I hoped to find an internet café, of which I had no idea whether or not there would be one. After a lot of walking and a few directions, I found what I was looking for, went online for 30 seconds, ran outside to the first pay phone and made the phone call, which by this point, she was at the pier…all for nothing. So that confusing beginning of my day was over at about 10:30 when we met back on the ship and walked back into the city of Fremantle, a lovely little town with a good deal of shopping. We ended up walking back to the internet place to look up possibilities for what to do that day, none of which worked out. I think Australians just don’t like to work on Fridays, because between paint balling, laser tag, go carts, and anything else we could think of, every phone call came back negative.
We left the internet café with no plans, and having nothing better to do, walked into the large didgeridoo store immediately to our right. For those of you who don’t know, a didgeridoo is an aboriginal instrument native to Australia, goes back 40,000 years, and is little more than a termite-hollowed wooden pole with a beeswax mouthpiece you blow into. The sound is unmistakable and I’m fairly confident you’d recognize it if you heard it. The store gives a free lesson to anyone who walks in, so upon meeting the owner, he took us aside and showed us how to get a sound out of a didge. Matt (my brother) actually has a crummy didge at home that works enough for us to get a sound out of, so I went into this lesson with some prior experience. And after a little instruction from both employees, I was actually doing surprising well with the didges and impressing my new friends at the store. I explained that I work on the ship and play sax, at which point they asked me to bring my sax in to jam before I left the port. So with that and me hyped up about the didgeridoos, Shannon and I left to pick up my horn and go for a quick drive through town.
The drive was nice and I got to see the residential areas of the city. We also stopped on the river where I could see Perth in the distance. The drive wasn’t anything too exciting, but I always like hopping in a car and going more places than I’d otherwise be able to walking.
We returned to Didgeridoo Breath (the store) at 3:30, 30 minutes before I had to get back on the ship. In those 30 minutes I had a couple quick jams which are probably going to be put up on youtube, tried out 10 other didges, and bought one to take home with me! Yep, I bought a didge, a real one from Australia, and though I’m not totally sure how I’ll get it home, I’m really excited that I have a new instrument to learn.
I barely made it back to the ship on time, showed all my friends the new toy, and the rest of the day went as usual. I probably played the didge a couple more hours that day when I had time, really enjoying the new challenge. Can’t wait to play it for you!