Perth, Australia

Viewed from the Captain Cook Cruise boat from Fremantle up the Swan River to Perth. With my school friend who was over from the UK visiting her son and his family in Perth. Wonderful catch up :-) For nearly 40,000 years the area on which Perth now stands was occupied by groups of the Nyoongar people and their ancestors – a fact that has been verified by the discovery of ancient stone implements near the Swan River which have been carbon dated at 38,000 years old. In December, 1696, three ships in the fleet commanded by de Vlamingh anchored off Rottnest Island and on 5th January, 1697, a well-armed party landed near the present-day Cottesloe Beach, marching eastward to the Swan River near Freshwater Bay. They tried to contact some of the Nyoongar to enquire about the fate of survivors of the Ridderschap van Hollant, lost in 1694, but were unsuccessful. Following this encounter, they sailed north, but not before de Vlamingh had bestowed the name Swan on the river because of the black swans he saw swimming there. Just over 100 years later, in 1829, Captain James Stirling founded Perth as part of the Swan River Colony. Stirling thought the natural environment around Perth was “as beautiful as anything of this kind I had ever witnessed” and advocated that a colony be established there. The British Government agreed to found the colony as the first free settlement in Australia, and settlers began to arrive in Western Australia in June 1829. heritageperth.com.au Stirling officially declared the foundation of Perth, capital of the colony, on 12 August 1829, the date chosen to honour the birthday of the King George IV. The name of Perth was chosen after the birthplace of Sir George Murray, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies. australiangeographic.com.au

Weathered dock warehouses on Victoria Quay, Fremantle, Western Australia Taken on a visit in 2018, prior to a cruise from the port of Fremantle to Perth, on the Swan River. Don't know the background to this mural.

Perth, Western Australia The Bell Tower includes the twelve bells of St Martin in the Fields, which are recorded as being in existence from before the 14th century and recast in the 16th century by Queen Elizabeth I. The bells were again recast between 1725 and 1770 by three generations of the Rudhall family of bell founders from Gloucester in England, under the order of the Prince of Wales who was later crowned as King George II. They are one of the few sets of royal bells and are the only ones known to have left England. From one of London’s most famous churches, in Trafalgar Square, the St Martin-in-the-Fields bells have rung out to celebrate many historic events such as, England’s victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588, The World War II victory at El Alamein in 1942, ringing in the New Year at Trafalgar Square for more than 275 years, celebrating the coronation of every British monarch since King George II in 1727, the homecoming of Captain James Cook after his voyage of discovery in 1771. On his return to London in 1771, the bells of St-Martin-in-the-Fields, the bells of the admiralty, rang out to welcome back a hero of the Age of Discovery. This fact adds a distinctively Australian connection to the bells. thebelltower.com.au