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Our first week in Perth turned out quite well considering the tasks we had set ourself. We arrived after a comfortable 7 hour flight to Perth airport and as the taxi was cheaper than the bus, we headed straight to the Planet inn hostel. Checking in we instantly had a flashback of the Rio Nature slum. A 24 bed stinky dorm filled full of sweaty people and not an ounce of space to put anything as it was so untidy. Knowing that we couldn't possible relax here we headed straight out to get some water and something to eat. This was when we realised how expensive Australia was; 4.5$ for a litre bottle of water and 9$ for the cheapest convenience tea we could find- A Donner kebab! We realised finding a job was a complete necessity as we definitely would not be able to continue our journey without some extra income! Settling back into the hostel for the night we decided on a plan of action for the following day. Luckily my blindfold and ear plugs had once again become very useful. As I slept soundly in my bunkbed, Jonathan was kept awake most of the night by a snoring walrus! Waking the day after we set off straight to the Internet cafe to start our main task for the week, buying a car. Budgeting, we was on the lookout for a bargain and something which we could hopefully resell to get our money back. A campervan was out of the picture as all the cheap ones had a major fault on them. We then decided to find a spacious tidy car in which if necessary we could kip in. Searching through the many ads their wasn't many. We finally spotted a Volvo sedan for 999$ so hoping on the train we nipped to nearby Bayswater to look at it. The car looked quite tidy however on the test drive it sounded rough! Thinking that we would be mad to part with any cash on this car we headed back to the town centre and back to the Internet cafe. After another search we found a Nissan for a bargain of 500$. The garage was also just down the road from our hostel so after a quick walk we arrived for our second car viewing of the day. This car was a complete mess and looked a hundred times better on the gumtree photos! Again we would have been mental to part with our money! Asking the car salesman what other cheap cars he had, he pointed out two others: Another Volvo for 1200$ and a Mitsubishi Colt for 950$. The Mitsubishi stood out to us the most; A tidy little car with fairly good body work and a clean interior. Considering this car was built in 1987 it seemed to have a few miles in him yet with only doing 129000 kilometres! Starting up with no spluttering we knew this was the car for us and as it would be cheap to run and had 12 months Rego on it, we also knew we would be likely to get our money back! The Rego itself was worth 500$ on it's own! Christening the car Joey we set off in our little kangaroo to start our tour of Perth! After a day out around Perth city centre looking at the various shops and parks, we continued our tour to the beaches. Scarborough and Karrinyup beach was both lovely, and although the weather was a little cold and windy you could imagine them being a great day out in the summer time. We continued our trip upto Hilary's boat harbour where we decided to return the following morning for a spot of fishing off the pier. We also started to plan our directions for Gingin where out first house sit would be. A straight forward journey which would take us into the Australian countryside. Hopefully we will see some Roos along the way! Hayls and Jonathan x
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