It's my last night in Perth, so a few observations before I finish my packing.

Public transport in Perth works.  In this they've been helped by having a young and growing city, so that as the suburbs have grown and the freeways have been built out to them, they've put a railway line in between the lanes.  Buses run in between the stations to pick people up and drop them off.  There are also free buses in the city centre- called CAT buses (for Central Area Transit) they link the main tourist sites, shops and the railway station, and they're used by locals as well as tourists.  So nobody who works normal hours in the city centre really needs to drive in.

For a state capital, Perth is modest.  The shopping area is slightly smaller than Leeds- no big deal, you might say, but the next big city is a couple of thousand miles away in Adelaide.  There's a slightly provincial feel about the whole place, although the Museum and Gallery of Western Australia do their best.  It's as if all the shop owners and so on know you aren't going to go anywhere else to shop, so they don't need to bother keeping everything spick and span.

The Perth Mint is a sight, though.  It's where the Australians mint their precious metal coins- in other words, the ones that end up packaged and sold to collectors and investors rather than used as currency, so the price tags in the shop are understandably hefty.  But to see liquid gold poured from a crucible into the mould, and then cool down from radiant orange as the gold specks start to form again- that's a sight.  I left the expensive commemorative coins in the shop, though.

So tomorrow I get on the Indian Pacific, a train which is going to take me to Sydney.  It takes four days and I cover something like 4250 km (Australia went metric for distance long ago).  I have a bed of sorts, but the slight disadvantage is that I'm sharing all the way...