Sunrise, Sunset

Perth, Australia. Before last autumn I'd never heard of it. Sure, Heath Ledger came from there but I'd never paid attention to that fact. When someone said "Australia" I would think of Sydney, Melbourne, or the Outback. I knew of Queensland and New South Wales through friendships made online with gamers. I knew New Zealand was down there too, but didn't realize just how far away it was. I'd seen a few movies about Australia; Mad Max introduced me to mind-numbing bush; Australia and Hugh Jackman introduced me to Darwin, not to mention Nicole Kidman, herself an Australian, and all of the movies she'd been in, despite the subject matter relating to Australia proper or not; the iconic Crocodile Dundee and the late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin opened my eyes to the outback and Australia's diverse biology; Russel Crowe was just outright badass; Dot and the Kangaroo, a book written in 1899 and later made into a cartoon/live-action film mixture first introduced me to Australia; and finally the summer Olympics in Sydney in 2000. I'm sure there were others too, but did any of these inform me of Perth?

Nope.

Not until last autumn.

As it turned out my wife, who is the primary breadwinner of our family because her earning potential as a research scientist is five times mine, was becoming disillusioned with her employment in the United States. There was an internal position that had become available that she applied for, interestingly enough, that she was already performing, but the powers that be had the opinion that she could not be trusted enough to take on the new position formally. What was truly going on was that she was being overlooked because she was a woman. Neither was this an isolated incident nor did they propose any sensible reason based in reality for not hiring her. Other women, too, were obviously being discriminated against.

The whole place has issues with women. If they're not refusing women sanitary environments to breastfeed - they suggested women could pump inside the confines of a bathroom stall! - or provide child care for working families they were approaching her and other women as if they were servants - she, a PhD scientist, asked to set up lunch tables and provide coffee before panels! They loved slapping her face all over their brochures and magazines to show the world how supportive they were of diversity in the workplace, however.

What's the point of all this? She saw an ad in a magazine for a position at a university in Perth for which she was highly qualified. She was the perfect candidate actually, and she asked me if she should apply. Knowing how additional job offers would give her power in her negotiations with her employers I told her to go ahead, that I thought it would be great to apply. So yeah, my fault. Despite her applying for this position thirty days past the deadline she was offered the job at the conclusion of her first interview!

Thus began the several months of heart-wrenching and worry as we pondered the move.

Perth? Where was that? It's no wonder we'd never heard of it. It's situated on the coast on the southwestern corner of the continent where it proudly sits as capital of the neglected state of Western Australia. Evidently it was considered nothing more than a backwater town until they discovered natural resources and BAM after several decades Perth is the fourth largest city in the country in population. It seems to be quite the cosmopolitan place these days.

Wikipedia and Wikitravel had some information about it, but everywhere else I looked, from bookstore to online book sellers to DVDs and audio CDs I could find very little about the town itself. Pictures on Google Earth weren't helpful either as most of the satellite scans are dated 2008. A friend of my wife loaned us the book "In A Sunburned Country" by Bill Bryson which she has read and shared what information she could.

It seems about all I could find about Perth was the equivalent to the AAA travel guide. If you ever want to know about Perth's history, check Wikipedia. If you want to know where to eat or a nice place to hike, check me.

Yet everywhere I looked I could find nothing on the society or the culture. I'm sure these books exist. I wonder if they are hiding from me.

I did come across a streaming video on Netflix about Perth, and it mentioned Perth a couple of times while being mixed in with Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney (is there not enough about Perth to fill a forty minute program?).

Because of this and the time constraints with this move we are moving to a town practically across the world from us and we have no idea what it looks like, what it feels like (other than hot), and how the city breathes. We don't even know the safest or best places to live. We do know, however, how expensive it is. That information is freely available. Everyone talks about that.

I've found a few dated blogs that discussed things like suburbs and crime statistics. I've gotten a few good ideas about the town from those. WWW.PERTHNOW.COM.AU has also been helpful.

So what's the plan? If I'm going there, I'm going to talk about Perth. If I'm going there, I'm going to make sure I do my part so that anyone else considering this move from the U.S. will have some more information to consider. If anything, it will keep me busy, and as I'll be a foreign national in a strange land with unfamiliar culture and no employment to keep me occupied, I'll need to keep busy.

X-day is sometime in July. I need to tell my parents. Here goes nothing.