As Qantas launches London-Perth, the first non-stop flights between the UK and Australia, Anna Reece of the Perth Festival picks her favourite cultural venues, restaurants, bars and beaches in the city. Drive in any direction out of the city and the diversity of the Western Australian landscape is at your fingertips. Perth itself is transforming and evolving as it experiences the highest population growth in Australia in the past 10 years.
Perhaps now it is fully able to herald and celebrate what it has always known it has: hidden treasures. We have a hashtag and we use it with pride westcoastbestcoast. The coastline is noticeably undeveloped, which makes our sweeping stretches of beach all the more spectacular.
Residential apartments have only emerged in the past 15 years and are set back so as not to impose on the sand dunes. Locals choose their beaches carefully: Cottesloe is no doubt a crowd pleaser, but walk a little further south to Mosman beach or north to Swanbourne beach or North Cottesloe and the crowds disappear.
For those after a little more sport, Mettams Pool is a natural rock pool surrounded by reef that offers a sheltered spot. Here snorkellers can swim through schools of garfish and buffalo bream, spot the red-lipped morwong, as well as brightly coloured tiny reef fish and abalone hiding in the rocky reef top. Dolphins and the occasional seal visit the outer reef. Customers lounge in hammocks, crowd around picnic tables or laze in deckchairs before or after a plunge in the sea.
Next door and another level up β in height, as well as offering β is Bib and Tucker , a bar and restaurant owned by Olympic swimmer Eamon Sullivan. The view runs from the majestic cranes and industrial buzz of Fremantle port all the way up to the Norfolk pines of Cottesloe. Closer to Perth, Yelo is on a hill overlooking Trigg and Scarborough beaches. Over the past decade the skyline of Perth has been transformed with new developments stretching from Elizabeth Quay in the city to the beachfront of the northern suburb of Scarborough.
