When I was a child, I loved picture books. You know, the ones heavy on pictures and light on words?

Well, that is the gift I am given you today.

We have developed a real fondness for Perth. 

Beyond the concert and fireworks we enjoyed last night, we have found even more reasons to like this place. 

From my point of view, this affection makes perfect sense. Perth is hot and dry. The sunsets are lovely. It is geographically challenged. For example, the next closest city with at least 1 million people from Perth is over 1300 miles. That makes Perth the second most remote city in the world, after only Auckland, New Zealand. In many ways, Perth is like my hometown of Midland, TX. 

But my surprise was seeing how much Susie, our native Bostonian, has also taken to this place. I think we both like fun architecture and good restaurants, but we really do not like crowds. If that is appealing to you, Perth should make your list of places to visit. 

The people are nice and the city is full of unexpected surprises. Virtually everywhere we go, we see public art, sculptures and cool architecture.

Today, we decided to do something that has become a typical family endeavor or us – we went to a Botanical Garden . . . that required a 7 mile round-trip walk.

Taking long walks can be really miserable.   But occasionally, you walk places that are so intriguing that you practically do not notice the walking distance. Such was our experience walking Perth.

We came upon a crafts fair with some fun games,

a tower designed to look like DNA

and some excellent gardens.

We are also here during the “Perth CowParade”, a series of cows painted and adorned in different ways – no real reason, just for fun.

Tomorrow, we plan to do something so absolutely Australian that we may achieve citizenship – we will go to a minor roadside animal habitat where we will actually hold Kuala bears.

Steve Sir