‘The best the world has to offer’: Where (and why) Perth people travel

Patrick and Kim: ‘Surfing has always been the heart of our travelling’

PATRICK: My first trips were from Perth to Mandurah. That was a big deal back in the day. It took a week! My family had a holiday home in Halls Head, so you had to get there by the footbridge. There was no road back then. There was a fishing industry back then, so it was very lively. It was a wonderful time to be there.

KIM: Our first overseas trip was to Singapore where my father was working and part of the expat community. It was for my 21st birthday. I was 17 and Patrick was 23 when we married. We’ve just had our 50th wedding anniversary, so you can work out how long ago that was. Singapore was incredibly lively even back then. It was a financial centre and the gateway to Asia. It was a great place.

PATRICK: Surfing has always been the heart of my travelling. It started not long after I left school in 1972. I drove around the country. I went over east to Byron Bay and to a place called Cactus Beach on the Great Australian Bight. And we first went to Bali in 1975. Kim and I were married by then, and she came with me. And she’s been coming with me ever since.

KIM: I’ve always loved going on these surf trips with Patrick. You become part of a surfing community. And it is amazing how interconnected it is. There are just a few degrees of separation between you and surfers all around the world. You can be sitting in an airport and strike up a conversation with a complete stranger and find you have many friends in common.

PATRICK: Especially among older surfers. Today there are 36 million surfers — quite literally — but back when Kim and I started travelling it was a small community. You could be in Taiwan, an amazing surf location, and start talking to someone from San Diego and ask them about so-and-so and they would say, “Yeah! He lives next door.”

KIM: Whenever we travel it is always to a place on the coast.

PATRICK: I have to see salt water!

KIM: And there is nothing worse than a dry surfer. They dry out and get cranky.

PATRICK: I’ve travelled a lot for business, but it was never just business for me. I always combined business with surfing. It took me all through the United States and to Hawaii and to Europe, to Spain, to France, to Portugal. And to China. There is nothing worse than carrying a couple of surfboards with you, so I left surfboards all over the world.

When surfing is at the heart of your travel it is always an adventure. A new place, different waves, a different surf culture. And camaraderie. I’ve met people on beaches and in the water who have become friends for life. I might not see them for a few years, but the bond is always there.

Living in China gave Bill a “completely different perspective”, and for Joanne, travel has underscored Perth’s incredible beauty. Credit: Mark Naglazas

Bill and Joanne: ‘Travelling forces you to look at the world through different eyes’

JOANNE: Our first big overseas trip was our honeymoon. It was to Phuket. We didn’t get out much while we were there. A few trips. Mostly we hung around the hotel. It was our honeymoon!

BILL: After that most of our travelling has been work-related. I work in oil and gas and I was offered a job in Houston. We were there for 18 months and we used it as our base to explore the United States and Canada. We took several trips to New York. And we drove through the South — to Mississippi, to Louisiana, to Alabama. And we drove all around Texas.

JOANNE: It was an amazing time. We went to places tourists don’t often visit: small out-of-the way towns in Wyoming and Oklahoma and Kansas and Colorado. It is so incredibly varied. Americans are often criticised for never leaving their country, but I can understand why they don’t. You drive across a couple of states, and it’s like you’re in a different country.

It was also just after the Sydney Olympics and Australia was on the radar. We were flavour of the month. So when people heard our accents, or found out where we were from, they’d get excited and invite us to bars and for drinks. We were also young so it was a great time to be travelling.

BILL: It’s true what they say about Americans being friendly. They’re incredibly warm and welcoming. You go to a restaurant and end up talking to complete strangers. As soon as you open your mouth and talk with a different accent they ask you where you’re from and ask you all about it. You can’t travel anywhere in America as an Australian without people chatting to you.

JOANNE: It was a really great experience. Unfortunately, it got cut short when Bill was offered a job in Beijing.

BILL: Unfortunately, SARS struck soon after we got there and Joanne moved back to Perth. I got stuck in a small town in Shandong Province — literally stuck! — and I couldn’t move back to Beijing. But during the three years I was working in China we did manage to see a bit of the country. However, it’s not that easy to move around. I visited a lot of small towns with my job, and you couldn’t go anywhere without a translator.

JOANNE: China changed after the [2008] Olympics. It felt a little more open and English was spoken a bit more.

BILL: After Beijing we relocated to Singapore — again because of work. And again much of our travel was connected to my work. We travelled to the US often because of the company I was working for and to Europe. And we managed to do side trips to places like Amsterdam. Because of my work we visited lots of different places and it sounds exotic, but it is not the most exciting way to see the world. It’s not as thrilling as you want travel to be.

JOANNE: It sounds like we have done a lot, but I feel we are yet to do really exciting travel. And that may be a few years off because after we came back to Australia we had children, who are now 10 and 15. With all the commitments such as sport, our travelling nowadays is pretty much restricted to going down south.

BILL: Travel is on the backburner until the kids are a little older. But I don’t want to leave them behind. I want to take them to Canada. We went to Canada quite a few times when we were living in the US. I really want to do the train ride from Calgary to Vancouver across the Rockies. I think Canada and the US would be a bit more exciting for the kids than Europe.

JOANNE: While much of our travel has been related to Bill’s work it still allowed us to see how other people live. Travelling opens you up to different ways of life and forces you to look at the world through different eyes.

BILL: Particularly living in China. It totally changed my perspective on things.

JOANNE: What I’ve realised after living in different places and travelling around the world is how incredibly beautiful Perth is. I don’t think we appreciate our own city enough. Just look around. Perth is stunning.

John has been all over Europe, Africa and Japan, but says experiential cruises in the Kimberley are “world-class, truly spectacular”.

John: ‘I got a better education in Europe with my mother than in all my years of schooling’

JOHN: When I was 15 my mother took me on a trip to Europe. We travelled all over. Athens, Rome, Naples, Florence, Munich, Paris, London and Edinburgh. It was a seminal experience for me. I got a better education in history and art and culture during those six weeks travelling through Europe with my mother than all my years of schooling. I kept a daily diary and took photographs and we went on all the tours that were available in the cities we were in. That trip to Europe had a profound impact on my life and my career.

I’ve worked mainly as a strategist and an entrepreneur, but that early experience of travelling in Europe, together with the time I lived in Melbourne, led to an emphasis on the arts. I was chairman of Perth Festival, on the board of Creative Partnerships Australia, I was part of the federal arts minister’s creative economy taskforce for the post-COVID recovery and I’m currently chair of John Curtin Gallery and deputy chair of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia.

While I’ve travelled extensively for work — in my 20s I worked for an American company and spent time going to the US — much of my travelling now is oriented around arts, culture and experiences. When my wife and I travel we’ll spend a lot of time in museums and galleries and enjoying the local cuisine.

In May and June this year we toured northern Spain with a fabulous guide, travelling from San Sebastian to Santiago de Compostela, taking in the artistic heritage, architecture and cultural diversity. We travelled on to Rome, Milan and Lake Como and I finished at the Venice Biennale, which was outstanding.

Travel is certainly an obsession for many people, particularly older people who have the time and the money. While I do enjoy travelling it’s not an obsession for me. What I do like is engaging with other cultures and learning about them. Not only does it give you an insight into how other people see the world, it also makes you understand and appreciate your own country and culture. You travel to learn about yourself and your country.

I also see travelling as a period of reflection. I remember seeing Da Vinci’s Annunciation in the Uffizi [Galleries] in Florence. The perspective used by Da Vinci reminded me that there is perspective in business and in life and in relationships. Remarkable experiences such as this stimulate my thinking in many other areas.

One of our most memorable travel experiences was to Namibia, which we did with friends including one couple who had lived there and were brilliant guides. It was absolutely spectacular. The game parks were excellent but the natural world settings, the landscapes, the local people and seeing those animals up close were breathtaking. It was a change from the hotels of Europe, but I can’t say it took us too far out of our comfort zone. It was glamping!

We have done a number of cruises in Europe and last year around Japan. It is a lovely way to travel. You unpack once, you check your passport in and all the sites come to you. It’s like degustation. You stop at a city for a day or two and move on. But we have such experiences here in Australia, such as the True North. Those experiential cruises in the Kimberley are world-class, truly spectacular. It is quintessentially Australian. It’s not toffee-nosed, it’s not contrived; it’s very authentic and very environmentally sound.

Travel to Europe is booming because Europeans value arts and culture. It is embedded in their cities. It is part of their way of life. All the great societies throughout history have had deep respect for arts and culture. So it is important for Western Australians to visit these places and bring back those ideas and practices. Europeans are big thinkers. We are a big state, but a lot of our thinking is small. Travel exposes us to the best the world has to offer. Experiencing how the rest of the world does things hopefully changes up our way of thinking.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.