Second time’s the charm
A reader and his wife were determined to go on holiday when their long-awaited tour – postponed since 2020 – got rescheduled again.
“HOW I wish we could start travelling again ...” That was how I ended my article that appeared in StarLifestyle’s Readers Share column on Jan 1, 2021.
After more than two years of border closures and movement restrictions, Malaysians were finally able to travel “freely”
(or at least, conditionally) again last year.
My wife and I were scheduled to go for a tour of Spain, Portugal and Morocco last September. This trip was supposed to take place in March 2020 but of course was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, as there were some issues with the airlines and tour agency, our tour had to be postponed again!
But that didn’t stop us from travelling. In fact, we were so determined to travel before the busy end-of-the-year holiday season started that we frantically searched for all the possible destinations that we could go to. One of the trips on our bucket list was a Brisbane-Sydney-Canberra tour in Australia. To our surprise, the air fare for this had almost doubled compared to pre-pandemic days.
Instead, we checked out Perth in Western Australia, which looked like a reasonable alternative as it is closer to Malaysia. Sure, we’ve visited Perth before in 2011, but back then we only managed to see the city, Freemantle and Mandurah. So, we didn’t mind going again as we figured we could see so much more this time around.
With a more thorough scrutiny now for an Australian tourist visa, we were advised to apply for it before making any flight arrangements. Using the Australian ETA app, we applied for ours, expecting a quick approval as per our previous trips to the country. Mine was approved after five minutes but my wife received an email requesting several supporting documents.
We were so anxious about that.
Nonetheless, after almost one week, her visa was granted.
After that ordeal, we frantically searched for air tickets, arranged our accommodation, ground transport, and booked local excursions and activities.
Finally, on Sept 8, we flew to Perth. We had planned for a trip that would take us to Freemantle, Mandurah, Margaret River, Augusta, Northcliffe, Walpole, Albany, Bunbury and Cervantes (The Pinnacles), and then back to Perth for our flight home. The entire trip would cover 2,400km.
When we planned it, we had expected at least a dual-carriage highway between the town/places that we identified along the route. How wrong we were! Not to complain but some of these towns were much smaller than Melaka or Ipoh (my wife’s and my hometowns, respectively).
Roads connecting the towns were just two-way streets and in certain areas there were hardly even 10 cars travelling in the opposite direction. Most of the time there was no network coverage between these towns, although perhaps we did not get the “correct” telecommunications service provider. We could still make calls to the emergency services (police, fire brigade, etc), though, so that was good.
The towns that we visited can be summarised by one interesting signboard that we saw in Northcliffe: “Where the heck is Northcliffe?” Nevertheless, the sceneries along the routes were amazing. We also have no complaints about the public facilities at the respective towns or places of interest. Busselton Jetty, Cape Natureliste, Cape Leeuwin, Windy Harbour, Valley Of The Giants (where the Tree Top Walk is located), The Gap/Natural Bridge, The Pinnacles were just some of the awesome spots that we visited in Western Australia this time around.
I would say that this trip was worth all the anxiety as well as the money, time and effort spent on planning it!
The views expressed are entirely the reader’s own.