The café strip along Beaufort Street in Mount Lawley, a five-minute bus ride out of Perth centre, is popular with both locals and tourists – there are dozens of places to recommend but somewhere that’s a little bit different is Leaf Tea Merchants on Walcott Street, just one set of shops back from the busy Beaufort Street intersection.

A friend who lives in the Hills region of Perth – the eastern part of the city – recently gave me a great tip for an evening wildlife adventure when she told me about the Karakamia Sanctuary in Chidlow, about a 45-minute drive from the city centre. It’s a 680-acre block of land that was bought by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, cleared of non-native pests like foxes and wild cats, and has now become home to growing numbers of endangered mammal species like numbats, wallabies and woylies.

Tourist brochures in any Perth tourist office advertise day trips to the Pinnacles – a strange yellow desert of limestone columns situated within the Nambung National Park, a two-and-a-half hour drive north from Perth along the coast.

But my advice is to avoid the tourist coach trip up to the Pinnacles – if at all possible, get a hire car and drive yourself there. It’s absolutely worth the effort because this bizarre national park is unique, and you’ll find it hard to stop taking pictures.

Looking for an alternative to heading into the busy downtown area of Perth, Western Australia, when you're after a drink? The Queens Hotel - known to locals simply as the Queens - is less than ten minutes away and there's still plenty of action.

The Perth Cultural Centre - which is where the state art gallery, library and museum are housed - has a new feature which arrived in mid-October. If you haven't seen the photography of Yann Arthus-Bertrand before then you are really in for a treat, and I don't mean that in a sentimental marketing hype way - this is really something.