Today it’s time to say goodbye to Australia and transition on to Singapore and Hong Kong in the coming weeks. We’ve spent the last several weeks looking at the nature of Western Australia, its night sky and beautiful coast, and then of course last week’s image of a quirky and simple boat house that happens to be pretty darn picturesque. I wanted to end my series with this scene I stumbled on of downtown Perth, while my friend Nico and I were goofing off in the city. I’m not sure I had ever seen pictures of Perth prior to visiting; it’s not nearly as popular as the cities on the east coast of Australia, but I must say, it’s a very pretty town.
At a little over 2 million people, Perth is Australia’s 4th largest city, behind Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. In the grand scheme of things though, 2 million people isn’t that huge (in comparison to US cities, it would sit between Houston and Phoenix), but even still, you’d never know it was that big, because the city is spread over 2,478 square miles! By contrast, the largest city in the United States by land area is Anchorage, Alaska, which is spread over 1,706 square miles (but has a population of just under 300,000!). What you end up with is a big city, with a very small town feel to it, and I absolutely loved it. As you can see from the picture above, Perth does have a downtown area, but the rest of the city looks more like small town America, spread out through a slightly different geography, with an absolutely gorgeous coastline, and some pretty unique wildlife (and of course, fun accents!).
Till next week!
–Dan Thompson