Before Heath Ledger played a gay cowboy or Bob Dylan, he guested on Australia's most famous soap opera that isn't "Neighbours," "Home and Away." So it's only fitting that after his death his home city of Perth would try to focus on his more highbrow works by naming a local performing arts center after him.
Ledger had no formal acting training because there simply wasn't a venue in the western town, although he did play Peter Pan in an elementary school production.
And speaking of good acting, a Rolling Stone critic says Ledger's posthumous performance as the Joker in "The Dark Knight" (out July 18) is good enough for an Oscar nom.
In these days of super-sensitive airport security, you can't really be too surprised that four boxes of plastic flowers could shut down an airport for half a day. That's what happened over the weekend at the international airport in Perth, Western Australia, when four suspicious boxes were unloaded from a flight arriving from Kuala Lumpur.
We're pleased that the authorities didn't want us to get blown up or anything, but these incidents do tend to get drawn out into major catastrophes. The alarm was raised about these boxes because an employee thought he felt something vibrating; they didn't get x-rayed for another 9 hours, by which time eight international flights had been canceled and thousands of passengers and staff had been evacuated.
We hope plastic flowers don't get added to the long list of can't-take-on-airplane objects. Or should we just make it a whole lot simpler and ban everything from planes? Then we'd all be safe from fake vibrating flowers.
You know we have a love/fear relationship with sharks here at Jaunted, and AQWA just intensifies that bond.
It might look kinda like a misspelt word but AQWA is the abbreviation for the Aquarium of Western Australia on the northern coast of the city of Perth. First opened in 1988, it was pretty cutting edge at the time and still has the biggest aquarium and underwater tunnel in Australia--no mean feat for a country obsessed with water and whatever comes with it. AQWA also proudly advertises that it has "the world's largest collection of Western Australian marine life" but that's kind of like saying the White House has had the largest number of American presidents sitting in it.
But back at AQWA, the fish and other sea creature displays--living coral reefs, sharks, rays, turtles and seals--are split into 5 zones to reflect the different kinds of ecosystems along the Western Australian coast. There are also touchpools and rockpools where you can get hands-on with some fishy fellas, and there's also the opportunity to dive with the sharks if you need a bit of extra excitement. Or it could be a chance to feed your annoying travel companion to the sharks ...
Jaunted is in the midst of a public transportation festival. Join us in celebrating the ultimate travel tool: a cheap way to get around. Share your stories in the comments or by emailing us at tips [at] jaunted [dot] com.
Down in Western Australia, the people of Perth love their cars. Added to that, Perth's a coastal city that stretches nearly 80 miles just to house one and a half million people who've all gotta live near the beach--all that makes it hard to make the ultimate public transport system. Transperth gives it a go, but just ask any tourist or foreign student in Perth and they'll tell you about the time they had to wait an extra half hour for their bus, or the bus drivers who wouldn't let them take their surfboard on a bus bound for the beach. (The bus drivers, however, do wear shirts, unlike their brothers in Bratislava.)
Just this year Transperth gave Perthites a big buzz with their new payment system: now you can be a SmartRider by getting a special card to use as a ticket. You can use it over any distance, it can be automatically topped up from your bank account when its balance gets too low, and when you do some complicated multiple bus moves during a day, it'll calculate the lowest possible fare for you. All you have to learn is what "tag on" and "tag off" means: Perth people are beginning to learn it's something to do with waving your SmartRider card over a magic box.
The Red Bull Air Race World Series hits Perth, Western Australia, this weekend for the final event in the 2006 series. After races this year in Abu Dhabi, Barcelona, Berlin, Istanbul, Budapest and San Francisco, the eleven participants and their purpose-built acrobatic aircraft will race over the Swan River at high speed, throwing a few rolls and tricks in for good measure.
This crazy sport is often described as "motor racing with wings," and Aussie spectators are busily trying to learn the rules. The planes will fly about 30 feet above the water, and they have to navigate both horizontally and vertically through inflatable air gates, finishing the course in the fastest time. Something good to know: the inflatable gates are designed to disintegrate if a pilot bumps into them. Finally, an almost biodegradable motor sport!
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