Thursday
Thursday morning dawned with the same weather that had greeted our arrival on Tuesday. We were greeted with the front page of the local paper telling us that Perth had been "blown away".
We were assured by Richard and Marge that this weather was odd and unseasonal.
We were very glad that we had flown in Monday as the news stated that 20 planes were stranded on the Tarmac because of the high winds, and 15 planes had to abort their landings.  In this great storm 50000 homes lost their power and a gust of wind was recorded at 115kmph. 100 homes were damaged and boats were washed ashore.
So this is sunny Western Australia!
We had talked to Richard and Marge about what we could do if the weather was bad and they had sensibly suggested art galleries and museums, even pointing them out to us on a map.
However, in true adventurous spirit we decided against doing this and instead decided to go a train ride to a town called Mandurah. Our reasoning being that even if it was raining we woud, see some of the surrounding countryside. So we caught a bus into Perth and then got the train. Unfortunately we were told by a very pleasant man in the information office that we didn't qualify for the concessionairy fare.
The train ride was interesting out through the suburbs and then on into the bush, we even saw a kangaroo. We alighted at Mandurah Station, having no idea where we really were or how far the station was from the centre of town. As usual or planning was second to none. Luckily outside the station there was a free shuttle bus advertising that it went to the town centre. So on we hopped, the driver was asked to tell us when to get off but this didn't happen, so we got off when we saw a foreshore sign. So being totally lost we started walking, after about 10 minutes we found a map on a post and discovered that we were going in the wrong direction. So we retraced our steps and found the information centre. There is some quite pleasing about being so naive and lost in Australia.
Mandurah was a new town built on a series of lagoons and canals all charmingly named after Italians.
The summer had clearly not started and there were very few people about. This may have been because of the high winds and the low temperatures but who I am I to make that judgement. We are tough people from Cornwall. We walked to the breakwater and watched the waves crashing over the wall in a fairly heavy wind. We had a pint of very cold and expensive beer and saw dolphins playing in the inner harbour, unfortunately they were just too far away for us to photograph.
We escaped the wind by going into the market hall, but is a fairly small and I interesting market. We walked back to the information office and had a warming coffee looking out over the breakwater, which was very pleasant.
The journey back to Perth was smooth and uneventful and we reached home safely. In the evening we went to the cinema to see Skyfall, the new Bond film. We arrived at the cinema and got tickets for the seven thirty performance. We sat down and due to form the adverts started at 7.15. Unlike England, the adverts then continued unabated for thirty minutes. We were really glad that we hadn't gone for the 8.00pm showing, as it was were arrived home at about 10.30 which was good timing.
We all enjoyed the film and it was interesting to me that the Aussie audience seemd to find different jokes in the script. All in all a really enjoyable day.