已发表: 21.11.2019
Australians are always on the move: they often move, travel a lot, and like to get around their city by car. Perth is a city that is a role model in terms of public transportation - but only for Australian standards. The bus drives, but it's actually empty. Quote from Leon, who regularly takes the bus to the bouldering hall: I've seen more empty buses here than people in buses...
On the other hand, the train is very popular for traveling to the CBD (the common abbreviation for Central Business District, has nothing to do with cannabis). And it often happens that the parking lot at the train station is completely full, so you have to... drive to the next train station!
Perth is car-friendly: wide, beautiful roads, cheap fuel, and traffic jams are very rare. In terms of mobility, the ecological thought is not a priority in Australia. There is no smog, the air is wonderful even in the middle of the city, the sea is crystal clear - you can quickly forget that humanity faces immense ecological challenges. At least they have been separating waste in our suburb since March! Late, but it's something!
The wealth of Western Australia comes from mining, which is carried out in inhospitable cities such as Port Hedland (iron ore) or Kalgoorlie (gold), where you work and earn decent money, but may not necessarily want to live there. During Renes' business trips to Port Hedland, he felt sorry for the ladies at the airport who constantly had to fan flies away from their faces. All business partners constantly moved their arms in front of their heads like windshield wipers to ward off the annoying bugs. The pests are everywhere, and supposedly every Australian has swallowed a few flies while talking in their lifetime! Where the money comes from, it is dusty, hot, and full of flies. That's why the majority of people are flown in for work assignments while the rest of the family stays in Perth. A choir colleague once spoke of her "fifo-hubby". Hubby is the term of endearment for husband, and fifo stands for fly-in-fly-out. Another choir colleague's son-in-law is a fifo pilot and exclusively transports workers to their jobs, which gives him pleasant working hours and a pleasing bank balance. In Kalgoorlie, the gold city in the middle of the West Australian Outback, there were too few hairdressers, so a hairdresser was flown in as a fifo worker by a mining company!
Australians are mobile and also like to use mobile services. So the mobile dog groomer often parks around the corner from us to freshen up the pups on High Street.
For children's birthday parties, you can rent the party bus, which looks similar to the indoor playgrounds in our furniture stores on the inside. There are also "Go Party" buses for adults who want to drive their drunken passengers through Perth's party districts.
The mobile mechanic and the mobile tire change service are really practical.
We were amazed when a van with an integrated wood stove showed up at the campground in Margaret River and offered its pizza - yummy!
And what a surprise today on the way to the beach, when the coffee van made another stop! Oh, life can be so beautiful...