Why is Perth so Special to Me?

I feel like this post has been a long time coming, and seeing as we're all talking about places we can't get out of our heads for this month's travel linkup, and seeing as I often get the question of 'Why Perth? What is your link with Australia?' I thought I'd get it all down in this one post. If you're new around here and don't already know, I lived there for a coupla years as a teenager and went to high school there, and to say I'm a little bit in love with it would be an understatement. It's weird how you can spend a short time somewhere and feel like you belong there, as if you were born in the wrong place.

Let's take it back to the beginning. When I was seven years old I got on my first 24-hour flight. We flew with Singapore Airlines, it was Christmas 1997, and it was magical. I'd never experienced anything like it. Sure, I'd been on transatlantic flights to the states, but this was a whole different ball game. I mean, we had our own individual seat-back TVs, that not only showed movies, but also had games on them! For a seven year old this was pretty awesome. After a few days in Singapore at the Shangri-La Rasa Sentosa (which until recently was the only luxury hotel on Sentosa Island), we landed in Perth and Aunty Wyn and Uncle Gray picked us up.

Please excuse the quality...I took a photo of the photo on my phone! Rottnest Island 1997

I still remember this trip so clearly, and I still remember falling in love with this city. I remember the sunshine beating down on our car as we drove along the wide open roads, I remember meeting a Quokka for the first time, I remember swimming in the crystal clear oceans of Rottnest, and I remember attempting to climb up the Gloucester tree down south and failing miserably.

We went back to Perth regularly until in 2007 we moved there. I kept a diary on my computer the first few weeks, and reading it back reminds me of how it was such a dream, I was living out my dream.

I love Perth because ever since I was a child I've felt like it was my safe place. I know it like the back of my hand, and it's familiar. I have so many amazing memories from there; so many birthdays spent there, Christmases, evenings at the beach. Friends. My first love. 

I remember driving to Heathrow airport to get on our one-way flight with a huge grin on my face, watching the sunrise over the fields that run alongside the M25 and feeling so at peace. I remember landing in Perth and feeling that same peace, that pure happiness at being somewhere where I felt I actually belonged.

I love Perth because I've never smiled so much like I did when I lived there. I love Perth because of the memories of walking down to the beach to watch the sunset, and walking to IGA at the back of our house with my brother to buy sweets, or 'lollies'.

Even Australia gets cloudy and cold sometimes during winter!

I love Perth because of my friends there, the friends that made me so welcome, and that gave me so many incredible memories. The evenings in Freo eating ice-cream with Cait and Rach and laughing at the woman inside who judged us for the amount of ice-cream we ordered, the evenings walking around the city aimlessly just for the hell of it. The evenings when we would sit on our beds and just talk about everything and anything. The evenings when we would all cause chaos and just be teenagers (we were the annoying kids who filled the Challenge Stadium fountains with bubble bath...).

I love Perth because of the family roadtrips and family days out, exploring the beautiful country and seeing things I never dreamed of seeing. I love Perth because of the days at the beach running in and out of the ocean trying to get cool in the heat of the summer sun, the Fremantle doctor blowing in in the afternoons and giving us some respite, and bobbing up and down on the ocean behind the waves on the surfboard. Because of the many times spent sipping on refreshing cans of Solo and then laying back in the sand with the sun beating down on my glistening skin until it was dry again.

I love Perth because of the weekend waitressing job I had on the beach, where I learnt how to be nice to people even if they're absolute shits. And where I learnt to appreciate the incredible sunsets I saw every evening that I worked there.

I love Perth because the school I went to there was so lovely in every way, because when my aunty back in England died suddenly from cancer during exam time, the teachers rallied round and were there for me, and because my classmates gave me hugs and made sure I was OK, baked me cookies, and listened to me sob loudly in exams and didn't complain.

I love Perth because there are so many places where you can be completely and utterly alone. Because if I ever need to run and sit somewhere and just think or cry or laugh, I can do that. I love Perth because of the constant beautiful scenery and array of colours that fill the landscape. 

I love Perth because of the sounds of the crows crowing and kookaburras kookaburra-ing, the smell of the peppermint trees after a storm, and the glowing red-orange sunsets that light up the sky like a painting on canvas.

I love Perth because I learnt how to do something I'd wanted to do for years, I learnt how to sail. I love Perth because three times a week I got to sit on a boat on the swan river and watch dolphins swim past as we sailed around Point Walter, from Freshie Bay over to Claremont. In the warmth of the summer sun my brother and I bonded and realised that actually, we could be close.

I love Perth because it was sailing that gave me my first experience of love, from the very first time he plucked me out of the water with his big strong arms because I couldn't lift myself out, I never knew what was to come or the years we would spend together.

I love Perth because it was the place I experienced a pure young love, the rare kind you get in movies and books. The kind you dream about but isn't meant to last, and the kind you can only have when you're young and foolish and reckless. The kind where you part ways, and years later can see each other again with peace in your heart and the knowledge that what you had was real, but not forever.

I love Perth because of the evenings spent with him laying under the stars by the river, wrapped up in a blanket when it got too cold. Evenings spent driving around being silly and laughing, parking at random places to watch the moonlight shine down onto the ocean. The kind of young love you have where you don't care what you do or where you go, as long as you're just with that person. Just sitting on the beach, or driving into the middle of nowhere just so you can talk for hours on the drive there and back.

I love Perth because it made me grow up pretty darn quickly, it gave me confidence, it gave me happiness, and it helped me find myself. I love Perth because whenever I go back it feels like home. It feels like I'm supposed to be there. And it feels as though I should never leave again.

Perth to me is special for so many reasons, and no matter how many people say 'it's boring' or 'it's so isolated', all I say in return is 'well I love it'...and when they ask 'why?' I just say 'everything', because ain't nobody got time to tell people everything in this blog post.

And every time I miss it and just want to get on a plane and go back, I read a Tim Winton book or look through my thousands of photos, and it feels like I'm right back there again.

Here's a little excerpt from one of my early diary entries:

At the moment I'll hopefully be back in Perth for a visit in January/February, until then, I'm just gonna keep reading Cloudstreet and living vicariously through my friends out there. The friends that have stuck with me through thick and thin, even when I was an emotional wreck and a horrible person. Another reason I love Perth - my girls are the best.

And the future? Who knows, maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to get to see my own kids live the life I wish I could have had as a child. Who knows, eh.