Lagging, walking, searching…

Eventually, with much turbulence in the approach, we landed in Perth. The common stereotype of Australia according to your average Brit would be ‘very hot, very dry, a bit red.’ We Brits are wrong quite a lot of the time, as the plane touched down horizontal streaks of rain marked the windows, it was tipping it down. Sat in an overloaded minicab heading towards central Perth the wind gusted violently around, this was monsoon-like. “There’s a storm front coming,” said John, our friendly taxi driver, “it should be here by ten.”

Welcome to Australia.

Our accommodation, the Emperor’s Crown on Stirling Street in Northbridge (www.emperorscrown.com), is perfect. Spacious, very clean, well designed, our home away from home for a few days. The flight had taken it out of us but we decided to fight through the day. Team meeting, then a two-hour wander through nearby neighbourhoods, alongside wide streets bordered by confusingly inconsistent architecture. None of us could quite get it into our heads that we were in fact walking around an Australian city, let alone with the objective of visiting each and every backpacker’s hostel and scouring the notice board for Vehicles For Sale. A fair bit of paper collecting later and we headed south to the Royal Perth Yacht Club, where BoardFree Australia is due to start on Sunday. Rachael Cox, Sailability’s chief in WA, greeted us warmly and showed us around. She bears bad news, revealing that the weather isn’t looking good for the launch, but she’s buoyant at the fact that it’s looking bright for tomorrow, a chance for the team to join Sailability’s regular sailors on the Swan River. Looking forward to it.

I write this at 7pm local time, sprawled on a bed with big eye bags and a thirst for pillows. Downstairs in a minute to upload this blog to the net, and then a search for online vehicle sales. Dim asked me today when I’d start to panic about support vehicles. “Thursday,” I told him and his new camera, “I’ll panic on Thursday if we don’t have vehicles.”