El Rojo Gato 14.5
Welcome to the Red CAT Route. This series is based around using what I think is a great addition over the years – the CAT (Central Area Transit) bus routes of which there are several. If you are a visitor, hop on – they are free and will show you some good parts if inner Perth. I use this particular route a lot, going between West Perth and CBD for work and occasionally down to the WACA (now walk over the Bridge to Optus) for some cricket.
NOTE – you are not looking on the bridge, you are off the bridge on the footpath with solid ground beneath you so if your GPS strays due to the tall buildings around such that you are on the bridge proper, head back eastwards. This cache is wheelchair accessible as well.
You are looking for a small, camouflaged cache located adjacent to the Mitchell Freeway. I think the difficulty here is very low – that is apart from the high people traffic during business hours Mon-Fri, so be mindful and discrete.
The series is based around some stops on the route, this cache is not a ‘stop’ but instead located between stops 14 (QV1) and 15 (Parliament) so I have called it “14.5”. These stops are located approx. 200m S.E and S.W respectively from this cache.
The 40-storey QV1 can be spied over the top of some smaller building in the way in the southeast. This was another of famous architect Harry Seidler’s modernist designs. I think Sydney, with his Australia Square tower got a better building (visually), but I think QV1 still worthy given its 1980’s origin and the impact it had on the significantly smaller city of Perth compared to Sydney at the time. Wave when you find it – see photo, I might wave back.
Parliament House to the southwest is clearly visible to you from the cache/bridge. It is fair to say it’s a melange of styles – showing the classic sandstone-heavy Federation era for its base visible from Harvest Terrace on the west, but also, and interestingly to me, blended with modernist 1960’s extension “off the back” facing east. This is the aspect you will see from the bridge. Have a look at both sides. It was a bold statement of WA’s past and future at the time of both construction and extension.
Anyway, the you are next to a bridge that spans the Mitchell Freeway, named after two time premier (1919-1924 and then again 1930-1933) of W.A. Sir James Mitchell. Planning began of the freeway began in the 1950’s with construction starting in 1967, was opened 1973 and has been expanded seemingly constantly since. I can image sleepy Perth with its population at the time of less than 400,000 people waking up in the 1950-60s and having the freeway pushed through, Parliament house being extended and the Narrows Bridge over the Swan not even a decade old at the time and all of this within a few hundred metres of the CBD.
That was a statement of confidence in the future but also coincided with the last tram being taken out of service in 1958 as we embraced the car-culture fully.
Congratulations to IBar who arrived on site first for the find.