House goes west

It’s been a loooooong time between blog posts. I reckon it’s the biggest break from blogging I’ve had in 10 years … yep, HouseGoesHome turns 10 next month. Hmmmm, how should I celebrate?

I’ll think about that later, right now I have a holiday to unpack. Have you guessed where I’ve been for the past two weeks? I was cruising The Kimberley and it was BULK FUN.

I didn’t want to say anything before we boarded the boat because in these uncertain COVID times you can’t count on anything until it actually happens.

And things were looking increasingly precarious in the week before we flew to Broome to start our cruise. The COVID outbreak in Melbourne was escalating, which was an issue for our holiday – we were using Frequent Flyer points and transiting via Melbourne.

DD prefers to hold the line and trust that everything will turn out fine. But, as I was driving across Sydney Harbour Bridge one afternoon, I heard on the radio that there had been another spike in cases. I rang DD and urged him to change our flights.

Fortunately, he was on the phone to Qantas when the Western Australian government closed the border to Victoria, so we squeaked in with a new flight direct from Sydney just before bedlam erupted.

A few minutes after our new flights were confirmed, we received emails saying that our original entry passes to WA had been denied. We jumped on line and arranged new ones with our revised travel details.

The change in schedule meant we had to fly out a day earlier. There wasn’t a bed to be found in crowded Broome, which meant an unexpected night in Perth.

When we landed at Perth Airport, we were greeted by medical staff in PPE gear, who took our temperatures and quizzed us about our health. Policemen loomed everywhere. It was oddly intense.

We passed the temperature check with flying colours and jumped in a cab to the city. After checking into our hotel room, we made a fabulous discovery: Northbridge. Neither of us had been there before and it was a revelation – a thriving suburb filled with bars, book shops and delicious Asian food.

Our first stop was Shadow Wine Bar, where we sipped glasses of wine and nibbled on fresh bread and white bean dip. We chatted to the people at the next table, who suggested we head to Vincent, a French-inspired wine bar up the hill. It was filled with character and happy people enjoying Saturday afternoon drinks and charcuterie plates.

We would love to return to the suburb again, it was a real find. However, we were feeling a little jetlagged and disoriented by the time zone change, so we caught a cab back to the hotel for an early night.

As there was no wi-fi for most of my holiday, I’m planning to spend the next week or so blogging on time lapse to fill you in with a day-by-day account of our adventures (plus any FFS stuff that happens back in the real world).

The blathery details will be at HouseGoesHome, while I’ll be travel blogging over at The Thirsty Travellers. I wasn’t sure there would be enough for a travel story and a blog post most days, but you know me … it was action packed.

That’s Day One of my adventure done. If you’d like to read more about Northbridge, click here.

Did I miss anything while I was gone? Fill me in …

Song of the day: The Village People “Go west”