To steal a quote from A Tale of Two Cities, Perth was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Please don't misunderstand, Perth is probably my favorite large city in Australia. On our last trip here, I really loved the place. To describe it, you would have to say it is a blend of Portland's scale and attitude with Los Angeles' weather and beaches. It's a clean city with an amazing progressiveness to it. There are hundreds of great little restaurants and shops with a huge Asian influence. Unfortunately, it didn't treat us kindly this time.

We arrived here to a storm that was so fierce they delayed unloading the baggage from the plane for nearly 45 minutes due to concerns about lightning strikes. This is pretty strange for Perth. Yesterday, we couldn't find a trace of a cloud in the sky all day. That's the normal weather for this time of year. The freak storm now seems like an omen of things to come!

We spend the next 3-1/2 days trying to figure out our itinerary to get from here to Darwin. We tried renting cars and campervans from every agency listed. We got quotes from several then found they had either gone out of business and their websites were still spitting out quotes, or when we tried to actually rent vehicles they backed out of their quotes and said there was no way they were sending cars up north this time of the year. Can you imagine the frustration? In my book, if you make a quote to someone, you should stand by it. To add insult to this, Val came down with a nasty cold the day after we arrived and wound up in bed while I was trying to get this all sorted out. She felt horrible and I was trying to make sure we got where we needed to in a way we could see and do things that we wanted, and not spend a fortune.

We finally settled on renting a car for a week to head south and do some wine tasting in the Margaret River region, and then drop it off back here in Perth. This was a reasonable plan and not too expensive. Then we are gong to get on the 'Easyrider' bus from Perth to Broome and take about 3-1/2 weeks to get there. It's a small bus you can jump on and off whenever you want. They even call ahead for you to book accommodations at backpacker's places. We will spend about a week at the Ningaloo Reef so I can do some diving. Then we will fly to Darwin.

I arranged all of this online at the 'Easyrider' office. The flight was booked and paid for. The rental car was reserved and confirmed with Budget, a large enough company that I knew we wouldn't have any problems. Now all I needed to do was pay for the 'Easyrider' portion of the trip!

Many companies here in Australia add a small fee if you use a credit card to make payments. Since this was going to be a fair chunk of change, I decided it was cheaper to go to an ATM and get cash to pay for it. So, I headed off to find the nearest ATM machine and withdraw cash from both Val and my accounts to cover the cost. I walked past one machine because it was in a seedy location. I found one at a major intersection and inserted my card and told it I wanted the maximum amount I could withdraw in a day. It processed my request and then reset itself to the start screen. No cash, no receipt, and most important, no card back. Panic started to set in immediately. I'm halfway around the world and this machine has just swallowed my ATM card. There was a phone number to call for problems with the machine. I called the number and after 10 minutes on hold, spoke to an operator in a call center in India who was of absolutely no help! Next, I went into the pharmacy where the machine was located and told them what had happened. The semi-comatose young girl inside said "wow, that's the second or third time that's happened today." I almost flew across the counter and throttled her! You mean you know this is happening and you haven't put an 'out of order' sign on the damn machine? I calmly asked her to call the company who services the machine and retrieve my card. She said they don't have anything to do with the machine and that I needed to go to the nearest bank branch and talk to them about it.

I walked a block to the nearest Westpac branch and spoke to a service rep for half an hour. She made several calls and got nowhere. At one point there was a security guard standing over my shoulder to make sure I didn't start any trouble. I must have raised my voice once or twice. Her suggestion of 'just contact your bank and have them issue you a new one' triggered a fountain of curses that probably scared away a few customers. After finally exhausting all avenues, and realizing that Westpac Bank is a bunch of useless idiots, I walked back to the pharmacy to talk to them about when the machine is serviced so I could try and be there when they open the machine to refill the money.

By the time I got back to the machine, at least four other people had lost their cards, and still nothing on the machine to say it was out of order. The comatose clerk refused to give me any information about the service schedule. She must have been convinced I was planning to rob the machine when they came to service it. I spoke to her boss, and she wasn't much help either telling me that it was the bank's machine and that they just rent space to them. Of course the bank said it wasn't their machine at all, but that they contract out to a subcontractor who maintains the machines and gets a fee for the service. Neither would give me the name of the company or a contact number.

My card is gone, but fortunately I have a duplicate that gives me access to one of the accounts and Val has her card. So ... all is not lost, but we now have no back-up in case of a lost or swallowed card.

When we left Perth yesterday, it was none too soon. We do have to go back again to catch the bus to Broome, but I won't be using an ATM machine while I'm there.

For now, it's off to points south and glasses of Cabernet with cheese on a sunny deck overlooking the Indian Ocean. Hopefully, we're about to have the 'best of times'.

Stay tuned,

Eric & Val