Public Transport

I must confess, we have been very impressed with the public transport here.

First, there is the CAT system, which stands for Central Area Transport system. These are basically free buses which you can hop on and off  as many times as you like when the buses are running. Granted, this being Perth - the buses run every 10 mins mon-friday during your typical working hours; and every 30 mins on weekends and evenings. However, if you hop on any other bus which runs through the central business district, you can also travel for free as well, and there are always plenty of buses going pass the central business district. We haven't worked out how bus drivers know whether you are going for a short ride or a long ride - short ride being within the central area - as typically you have to tag on and off with a Smartrider card (which is similar to an Oyster card you get in London).

Then, there is the train/underground system. There are 5 lines which all start and meet at Perth Central, taking you to different suburbs in Greater Perth. The furthest point (to Mandurah) takes 1 hour, but the other lines typically take 30 mins the most to get the the end of the train line.

We went to Freemantle on Saturday just gone -  it's on the Freemantle line, and the last stop is Freemantle (surprise surprise); this took about 30 mins from Perth Central, which is brilliant, as this is a seaside/beach town - and only half an hour away from Perth Central! After having fresh BBQ squid at Freemantle for dinner, we took the train back to Perth Central. By this time, it was getting to be 'party hour'. There were a lot of young'uns getting on the train going into Perth Central, all dressed up and super hyped up for a night out on the town.

Now you're approaching anything like my age (mid 30s), then the thought of super-hyped up kids going into town whilst you're about to hit the sack does not sound enticing; and paranoia kicks in where you start to think you can be attacked by one of these kids.However, we were pleasantly surprised and reassured to see some Officers on the train making sure that these kids were behaving themselves. Now these Officers double up as ticket inspectors as well, as we recognized them from our earlier trip out to Freemantle where they were checking our tickets.

The added bonus as well, was that these Officers were the type you did not want to mess around with, unlike the Underground Angels we used to get on the London Underground or the Community Officers we get in London where they have no legal jurisdiction over you, nor look like the type that can help you if you were set upon by any drunken hooligan.