Perth

Adam and I stayed in touch a little bit and a few years later I made it happen; I was in Australia! One of the first things on my list to do was to go to Perth. I booked my tickets and on a Friday evening I arrived there. Adam picked me up from the airport and we went for drinks and dinner in the city.

On Saturday we went on a boat to Fremantle; a town close to Perth with a big history of convicts (and thus the 'start' of Australia). We did a tour around Fremantle prison, which was given by an ex-prison guard. It was an extremely old and harsh-looking prison, yet it was only closed in 1991. It was creepy and interesting. Especially all the ins and outs about the hanging of prisoners were a little bit too much for me.

One thing I really wanted to do was to go to Rottnest Island, so I went there on Sunday. This is the only place in the world where quokkas live - also known as "the happiest animals in the world" (see picture). I had read that it is illegal to touch or feed them. I fully respected that and was not going to do that. Little did I know that quokkas are more interested in humans than the average house cat. At some point I kneeled down to film a quokka that came up to me. It came closer and closer, and was checking whether I had any food in my bag (I didn't). I thought that was quite cute and stayed as still as possible not to chase him away. Then, all of the sudden he jumped on my lap. I laughed, but also envisioned that $2000 dollar fine for touching a quokka. So I tried to get him off by shaking my leg, but he just wouldn't go! I sat there for five minutes until some other people came and he went to see if they had any food. Quokkas should get fined for touching people (although it was quite funny and cute).

On Monday morning I left Perth to go back to Melbourne. I really enjoyed my weekend in Perth – yet another dream came true!