Wednesday, 15-10-2014. Day 56

And You Thought Yesterday Was Hot ...

The day was gearing up to be even hotter than the day before, and, as much as we love the Murray Hotel, we couldn't really hang around there all day. So we were looking around for something to do. And that reminded us of what one resident of Perth told us:

“Perth is a great city to live in, but there's not a lot to do here.”

With that in mind, we were staying near King's Park, a large (1,003 acres) urban park that Perthians like to boast is larger than New York City's 843-acre Central Park (but it can't touch the 4,310 acres that make up Griffith Park in Los Angeles).

So, despite what we'd heard from the resident mentioned above, visiting King's Park was definitely something to do, and we decided to do it.

*Queen Victoria is commemorated all over Australia, so we weren't surprised to see another statue of her at King's Park way out in Western Australia.*

Despite the Central Park comparisons, Kings's Park is a lot more like Griffith Park — it has swaths of usable green space for humans to frolic in, but a good portion of it is still overgrown with wild, naturally occurring plant life (what the Australians call the bush).

*Mother and Child Fountain, one of the green spaces in King's Park.*

We started the day with a walk to Stickybeaks Cafe, a cafe next to a children's play area. The equipment was a little small for the girls, but they discovered a cool climbing structure nearby and spent some time there.

Bali Memorial

The day we visited King's Park was one day after the 15-year anniversary of the 2002 Bali bombings that killed many people, 88 of whom were Australians, and wounded numerous others.

We stumbled across the Bali Memorial to those victims in King’s Park purely by chance. The memorial is designed and constructed in such a way that takes advantage of the rising sun each morning (although we didn't see this ourselves). The glass fronting the river is etched with the words:

“Let the River Carry Your Sorrow Away”

*Perth CBD and the Swan River, looking out from the Bali Memorial.*

Tree Top Walkway

One of the big draws in King’s Park is called the Tree Top Walkway, and a few people told us we had to see it. We stopped in at the visitors center to get to the bottom of this Tree Top Walkway business, and one of the docents there got us oriented and on or way.

The Tree Top Walkway (also known by its corporate-sponsored name of the Lotterywest Federated Walkway) is in the middle of the Western Australian Botanic Garden, a section of King's Park that contains more than 2,000 species of Australian plants.

The walkway offers great views of the Perth skyline and the Swan River and up-close views of a good number of the plants native to the region.

In addition to the Tree Top Walkway itself, one of the signature attractions of the Botanic Gardens is the Gija Jumulu, a large, 750-year-old Boab tree that was transported more than 3,000 kilometers from the northern part of Western Australia to King's Park (it was removed and relocated to make way for road construction).

Boab Tree, Gija Jumulu. — *Boab Tree,* Gija Jumulu.

The day had been hot and the sun relentless, so after we walked back to the hotel, the girls wanted a little pool time before dinner. West Perth sort of shuts down at 4:00, so walking back from the park was sort of like walking through a modern ghost town. Aside from the occasional car driving by, we didn't see a single person on the way back.

This, of course, made finding a place to eat nearby a little challenging. We eventually settled on dinner at Gordon St Garage. When you walk into a restaurant and Serge Gainsbourg is playing, it can't be all bad. And it wasn't bad at all.