Running along Perth's Swan River and Heirisson Island

Today was a beautiful day in Perth.

Steven and I did our tourist thing, which I will post more about later, and then went home around 3 for a break. I took that break to get my run in along Perth's beautiful Swan River, where we are told there are heaps of dolphins (but we've not spotted any yet!).

The riverside esplanade is a busy, paved bike, walk and run path that basically follows the river all along its shoreline. I ran towards Heirisson Island because I read in one of our tour books that there is a colony of wild grey kangaroos living there.

Yes.... KANGAROOS in the city!

It was easy enough to find it, but when I got there, I was stopped by this fence:

As I was moving along at a pretty good clip, I didn't want any kangaroos to come at me with both feet and knock me over. That would majorly ruin my perception of cute little kangaroos hopping around harmlessly. Plus, it would MAJORLY ruin my run. Anyway, so I didn't enter the kangaroo gated areas and took my run back to the riverside.

The Swan River path is basically a flat, straight line. No hills, no detours, no woody trails.

In short, absolutely NOTHING like the hilly, bushy terrain of North Sydney that I'm used to.

My splits were surprisingly fast:

I usually cover the same distance, up and down hills, in 45 or 50 minutes in North Sydney. While it was amazing to see the speed I could get on a flat road, I also got kind of bored of the scenery after the first 10 minutes. I haven't realized how lucky I was in Sydney to have the challenge of hills and the changes in landscape (residential roads to bush). I guess I've been spoiled by the trails.

Anyway, there are still plenty of areas in Perth I'd love to run. For instance, the biggest city park (bigger than Central Park in New York) is King's Park on the west side of the Central Business District. I'm sure it's a great running zone, so hopefully I'll be able to see it soon.