Perth 16th Nov

So the day started early at 5:30 with toast and a new blog post for you all! 

Once we had finished all that malarkey and had a shower it was admin morning! 

First things first was off to Westpac to sort out our bank account, this was amazingly easy and we were done very quickly. Next was Telstra for an Aussie Number for Laura's phone as it's unlocked (side note if you need Laura you won't get her on the UK number so drop us a Facebook message or email through here! 

We left the shop with the aim of going to woolies to grab some food then back to the hostel. We were greeted with typical Aussie weather.. Rain. It threw it down we got soaked so went shop hopping until it stopped. Luckily we got a break in the rain to get back to our hostel. Once we got back we had bacon sandwiches for lunch and planned our next adventure, we wouldn't be seeing Deb and Ian until 5ish so planned to find the green cafe & go to the Perth Mint. The green cafe was a let down so we didn't stay there long and wondered off to find the mint, we took a detour through some lovely gardens, past the supreme courts and along the riverside. We timed it just about right as we walked through the gates to the mint the rain started again! We had a little look around all the jewellery before our tour started. It was really interesting to learn where gold comes from and that the Mint was built by the British which was used to make Sovereigns. We saw replicas of the top 3 biggest gold nuggets found in the world (all of which were found in WA) 

We were then taken to the back of the mint where we were shown the world biggest legal tender. The coin below is worth 1 million dollars and weighs 1 tonne. 

It's actual value in gold is:

This was all very cool but the exciting part of the tour was watching a gold bar being poured. Adam was the chap who would be showing us how it's done. It was amazing to watch it come out of the furnace and being poured. It turned out that exact bar had been poured hundreds of thousands of times as its dropped back in the furnace at the end and repoured for the next group. 

After this we found out our weight in gold and had our own custom coin engraved! Photo to come*

Once we left the mint we started to wonder back to our hostel to find the phone ringing! Deb and Ian were on route to come and find us; within less than 5 minutes they had found where we were and we had a very excitable reunion. Since then we have done a big food shop, moved out of the hostel and into Deb and Ian's apartment ready to leave early in the morning and gone for dinner in the city.