Friday 7th May - Fremantle

Moving out day, but luckily we aren’t homeless.  Annie, the lady from whom we rented the cottage, has kindly invited us to stay in her spare room, although she has warned that it mainly contains a drum kit and we also have to contend with three children, two cats and a “pathetic” dog (her words, not ours!).  We popped round last night to tell her that it might not be until the end of the week that we have the Land Rover, but she said that was fine and gave us a key.

Having checked that the Delivery Order had been sent over to Jan at Coote, we could now relax and do some touristy stuff, so after dropping our bags off at Annie’s in the morning we took Butler the dog down to the beach for a run about.  We should have taken our swimming stuff as it was gorgeous - next time.  After a quick bite of lunch we then dragged Butler into Fremantle with us, as apparently he likes to go out for coffee.

It’s about 20 minutes walk into the centre of Fremantle, or Freo as it’s known locally, and we came in along the front by the ship yards and marina, before reaching the grassy Esplanade.  We were struck by the early (for Australia) architecture of the buildings, many of which date from the late 1800s.

Cafe culture seems to rule, but we were in search of maps so didn’t indulge until after we’d bought our Great Desert Map set covering the interior, and a second set to cover most of the other interesting 4WD routes.

On Chris P.’s recommendation we stopped in at the Little Creatures pub and brewery housed in a former boat shed to sample their Pale Ale.   Chris wasn’t wrong!  A bit of reading in the shade with a cool beer in hand and dog at your feet - what more could you want on a sunny afternoon. SPOT

Back to the house for a pasta meal and some admin tasks, the latter involving writing up the blog for the last five days.  We’re both a bit sleepy and I seem to have picked up a bit of a cold - too many germs on the plane.  So an earlyish night is in order to prepare for a trip into Perth tomorrow.