first contact...

...at 'Betty's Jetty' (officially Elizabeth Quay), Perth's riverfront development at the old Barrack Street Jetty is now a big space of water and walkways, art works and a gondola...WHAT?? yes a gondola (extra).

A lovely Sunday and we decided to head into the city, park at South
Perth jetty and catch the ferry across the Swan.
First Encounter a sculpture by Noongar artist Laurel Nannup  depicts how the arrival of European settlers to, the now, Perth was observed by the Noongar people and now greets those arriving from the river to the Quay.
“When the white people first came and the Noongar people would have thought it was their ancestors coming back to life,” she said. “They would have thought it was like a big bird bringing people back.”
In traditional Aboriginal culture, seagulls are often seen as the embodiment of ancestral spirits flying over the sea. So the first sight of the distant, bird-like sails of the first European vessel to reach Australia 400 years ago would have been a mystifying combination of the familiar and unknown.

And on this very day another HUGE bird lumbered into Perth , an Antonov 225.
Perhaps that's why Betty's was so quiet? Gridlocked around the airport watching 'Mriya' arrive.

The day of the bird!!