We woke far too early – hardly surprising given the jet lag, but with a nice sunny (and hot!) day in prospect we decided to head off early. We took the very handy ferry from South Perth across to Elizabeth Quay which is very handy for the city. Our destination though was Kings Park, just to the west of the city centre. Kings Park is one of the largest inner city parks in the world at 988 acres. With a park that size, you wouldn’t have thought we could have missed it, but though we set off walking in the right direction and could often see the park, we couldn’t seem to find our way up to it. Eventually, and with some trepidation, we followed signs to Jacob’s Ladder. Though this might be a healthy route to the park, after 242 steps, it didn’t feel it and we fell onto the water fountain at the top in relief. Once up there though, it was lovely. The view over the city and the Swan River from there is excellent.
The park is a mixture of bushland, grassed park and botanical gardens. It is located on Mt.Eliza, said to have been named by James Stirling (the captain of the not very well-named HMS Success – she was shipwrecked at a later date off the Western Australian coast) when he was inspecting the Swan River looking for possible sites for colonisation. He named the mountain after the wife of the New South Wales governor at the time – Ralph Darling. I suppose that the residents of Perth should be forever grateful that he named it after Darling’s wife – Ralph’s Ridge wouldn’t have the same ring about it. Stirling climbed Mount Eliza and supposedly proclaimed that the surrounding country, meandering river and distant mountains are ‘particularly grand’. That was certainly our view, though there is not much surrounding country left, with most of it having been absorbed into greater Perth!
We meandered around the Botanic Garden – said to have 2,000 species on display. We saw a proportion of those! There were though some lovely and instantly recognisable bottlebrushes and banksias as well as a spectacular Boab tree.
The park was originally named Perth Park, though this name was changed in 1901 to King’s Park to mark the ascension to the throne of Edward VII. More recently the apostrophe has been dropped – perhaps an indication of changing view on Royal ownership of things! After a nice wander around the park and botanic garden, we headed back down the Kokoda steps – a memorial to the Australian troops who fought in the Papua New Guinea campaign 1942-3. From there we walked across the Narrows Bridge in company with 10 lanes of traffic (and a train track), watched the Swan River seaplane take off and then back to Mends Street jetty by the ferry.
There we met Robin and Brigitte – friends from Baltic sailing and spent a very pleasant few hours catching up. They had been touring all around and were at the end of their trip while we are at the start ….
