31/08/25 Whales and Walking

"There's a whale out to sea," said the man behind us as we trudged through the sand to Leighton Beach.  "My wife is in the sauna and she said she can see it from there, so it's got to be somewhere here."  He sprinted past us, flanked by two excited small children.

We had come to Leighton Beach because it had the closest train station and, as luck would have it, on Sundays public transport in Perth was free to those of us fortunate enough to have purchased, on arrival, a Perth travel card.

Sure enough, there was a little whale family lolling out to sea with desultory surfacing to blow and make an occasional splash, not bothered at all by the crowd getting all excited on the beach. 

I promise it's a whale.

It was all a bit of an anticlimax although I did have questions about how to access a sauna with whale-spotting capacity. It wasn't long before we took ourselves back to the train to Perth, and onto Perth's single public transport ferry all the way to the other side of the Swan River where lay the Perth Zoo and a long and delightfully grassed foreshore.

Mind you there wasnt much else to do if you werent going to the zoo or going for a walk. Roger had hurt his leg and wasnt walking very much so off I went on my own, up one side of the river, across the Boorloo Bridge (pedestrians and cyclists only, thank you very much), and back along the river to the ferry terminal and the train home.

It was a very pleasant walk.  Cyclists of all sizes, shapes, and abilities zoomed past me.  Ring necked lorikeets feasted in coral trees and black swans and pelicans basked in the bright sunlight on their very own purpose-build island.

The Boorloo Bridge was impressive in a bendy, bridgey kind of way, especially since there was a cafe at the other end where a strawberry milkshake was just what this tired walker needed.

The walk back along the river from the bridge  was all the better for being unexpectedly shorter on account of I thought the bridge was half way but it was, in reality, much further along. 

The home stretch.

Back at Elizabeth Quay I crossed the imaginatively named Elizabeth Quay bridge and wandered back through the city to the train station.  The city was jammed with people due to having hosted both a fun run and a protest march on the same day, with the remnants of both crowds dawdling through the city wearing a glow of achievement and some of them yelling obnoxiously and waving flags.

Back in Fremantle, and because I'm a glutton for punishment, I collected Roger and we went for a quick wander around Fremantle's collection of malls and lovely old buildings.  

And then I went to soak my worn-out feet, which had clocked up over 8km and given me great faith in my new walking shoes.