The appeal of Perth: endless sunshine, blue skies and a bearable "lightness of being"

I've just returned to our temporary home and office (my uncle and aunt's house at Bendigo, north of Melbourne) after almost a week visiting family in Perth, Western Australia, the country's most isolated capital. And as much as I love it here, returning has been a shock to the system. While we had clear blue skies, daily sunshine and temperatures in the mid-high 20s (Celcius) in Perth for a week, here it's grey and cloudy, it feel like it hit 0 degrees last night (and probably did) and we're well and truly rugged up in the winter woolies, and stoking the fireplaces every night. While I was busy seeing my family and still worked every day, I somehow felt rejuventated and reinvigorated from being there. It's not only the weather, but it's the water everywhere - from the Swan River that meanders through the city, lake-like in parts, to the beautiful beaches of Cottesloe and Scarborough where we stayed a few days. There's a "lightness of being" (thanks, Milan Kundera) to Perth that you don't find in grey old Melbourne or even gorgeous Sydney, no matter how beautiful that city is - and I think it's because they're big, fast, polluted, high-density, traffic-heavy cities. There's a lot to be said for small, slow-paced, clean, low-rise, low-key, and laidback cities like Perth. I've spent a fair bit of time in them on this trip and I'm increasingly finding them more appealling. I think it's a shame that the vast majority of travellers to Australia have a few sights and a couple of cities on their lists to tick off - Uluru (Ayers Rock), the Great Barrier Reef (Qld) and Kakadu National Park (NT) tend to comprise the top three sights, and the big cities of Sydney and Melbourne mark the main entry and exit points. Far fewer foreign travellers make it to Australia's other cities, the highly underrated cities of Darwin, Adelaide and Perth. Yet I'm finding them far more alluring.

P.S. I've just written a story on Perth for Carlson Wagonlit's business travel magazine Connect; I'll let you know when it's out.