Thornlie to Perth and Back Again

This is my longest walk and most likely my longest blog to date. I walked today over 30 kilometres and my feet certainly paid for it. I left home at 8:45am and made my way to the end of our road, about 3.5km. From there I took the pathway that went beside the river. After a kilometre there was a footbridge over the river, as the pictures below shows the Canning River looks very nice, although this picture was taken only a few hundred metres from a major shopping centre and a major highway.

The weather once again this Saturday magnificent. After a two hour walk and approximately 12 kilometres I made a slight detour to walk past my childhood home. The house was sold when I was 17. It is interesting  to note how everything feels bigger when you look at the same scene as a kid.
From here to the Causeway was a little over an hours walk. My new shoes were irritating me a little, especially the left foot. It feels like I don’t have enough toe space.

As I walked over the Causeway to the CBD I detoured to walk around one end of Heirrison Island. Heirisson Island was named after French midshipman François-Antoine Boniface Heirisson, who was on the French ship Le Naturaliste which was a scientific expedition led by Nicolas Baudin between 1801 and 1804. The expedition made several journeys up the river from Fremantle in long-boats and made the first maps of the Swan River. The island was named in June 1801. The Causeway is two bridges that cross the Swan river and use Heirrison Island to join the bridges. On one end of the island is stature to remember Yagan who was killed in 1833 by two young farm hands in a treachorous way, Yagan’s head has only recently been returned to Australia after being kept in a British Museum. Unfortunately the stature of Yagan doesn’t look Aboriginal enough.

Just over the Causeway is a lovely garden known as Queens Gardens. They were created in 1899 and this site was once a clay pit which was the source of the bricks for many of the early buildings. In the gardens are  some swans and  their cygnet.

Yagan on Heirisson Island

 

Yagan plaque

From Queens Gardens it is about a 20 minute walk into the central CBD. My feet were getting fairly tender, but mainly my left foot as my toes feels too squashed. It has taken 3.5 hours to walk into to Perth. Easily 3 hours if I hadn’t had a few detours and stops.

I find by walking it is quite amazing how many different little things you get to notice that you don’t while driving. It would seem to be boring walking so much, but it isn’t. Little things happen all the time to increase the interest. For example on the journey home I was walking past St Mary’s Cathedral and I could hear some Handel music being played. I’m not a great lover of Classical music, but this sound good. I ducked into the cathedral and there was a group of young people involved in a rehearsel. Being played inside a large cathedral the music sounded glorious.

I didn’t particularly enjoy the walk home. I found my left foot really hurting. I put on double socks. This helped for a while then I decided to try no socks on my left foot and that seemed to work well, but I did end up with a blister. One thing I did pass that was interesting was the Community Garden in Victoria Park, I believe a new venture, where people can have their own plot to grow stuff. A great idea. I found walking home along Albany Hyw that it was either car yards, eating places, a large number Indian restuarants and liquor outlets. There was also 4 hotels. There must be an enormous amount of money expended on alcahol. One section of Albany Hyw from Shepparton Rd to Leach Hyw is just an aweful dreary strip.

My walks have indicated that there are some beautiful areas and facilities around Perth. The cities looks so prosperous, but as Josh my son told me, we are rated as the third most unsustainable city in the world. Much of our wealth is based on mining. So any turn around there could have dramatic effects.

We have some beautiful parks along our river foreshores, but the reason some of them are there is because we treated the wet area along the river foreshores as areas to dump our rubbish, this was being done up until the 1980s. Some of the rubbish material now leaks into the river. Perth had many natural wetlands, but a large number were filled in as rubbish dumps, or converted to housing estates. I would hate to see what would happen if we had a really wet winter – but it won’t be this year!

I arrived home at 6.15pm. My feet rather sore. I need to see if I can change my shoes for some with more room for the toes. I spent about 1.5  hours in Perth before commencing the walk home. So my walk home was 3.5 hours.