Perth - Celebrating WA Day

Happy WA Day everyone!
On Monday morning I made it by bus to the Bell Tower at 10:05am. So just 5 minutes after it opened. But due to WA Day (Western Australia Day) the entrance is FREE and well, this queue has already formed.

After one hour I have come close enough to the entrance and to a point where even the construction site next to the Bell Tower was really interesting. This is Elizabeth Quay under construction until about 2015. Fascinating, right?

Another 30 minutes later I was finally in the tower. Due to safety reasons only 100 people at a time are allowed in the tower. Here the view onto the queue from above. Believe me if I say this is only half the queue as it continues to the left along the street.

And again the construction site of Elizabeth Quay but this time from above.

These are not the actual Swan Bells but they ring as well and are really loud.

I took a little video in the bell viewing platform as the bells where ringing. Due to WA Day there where bell ringing sessions taking place all day for a donation. As I have already done it at my previous visit to the Bell Tower two months ago I left it at walking on the top floor.

At shortly past 12pm I arrived with the FREE Blue Cat bus to the cultural precinct of Perth in Northbridge. Lots of people surrounded the museum.

I first walked to the museum grounds where you will be greeted by this dinosour as the new dinosour exhibition opened just a few weeks ago.

I walked into the food market tent to witness the grand finale of the WA Signature Dish competition. People from different regions who are not profession cooks had to cook a dish with the local produce of their region.

I walked around the tent and had a look at all the stalls who solely sold WA produce. These guys even have Lamington flavoured ice cream! But 5 AUD for one scoop???

The New Norica bakery where I have just been yesterday. Apparently very popular, they sold lots of their bread.

At every stall you could taste the products, so I ate different mustards, mandarins, apples, banana juice and other things. I could almost call it lunch.

Back outside again there were many activities and things to see. Like this science demonstration of Scitech or the frames hanging in the trees of places, people and events of WA.

This is a "i" and a heart. So it stand for "I love".

And these are the letters wa for WA.

You could choose a coloured band and write on it what you love about WA. So this is my contribution.

Luckily it was sunny, so all the activitis could take place outside. Like this drawing with dots like the aborigines do it.

Or this little walk-through plane of the flying doctor service of Australia. There were a lot more activities but they all aimed at children (face-painting, early beginnings readings, storytelling, Quokka-badge-making etc.).

There were quite a few of these signs around to take your picture with it and then hash-tag it. Not as cool as the hash-tag signs of Melbourne (like at the Australian Open or the Grand Prix) but still nice.

Well, it was a nice day out but as the target group was clearly families I found it very boring after a while. As there were no fireworks or other night activities advertised, I got back to the house by 3:30pm. I have to do some research on the internet for my next trips around Perth. WHY? Because I am expecting a visitor soon :-) So stay tuned for my next posts about trips not on my own.
Yours WA-celebrating Stefanie