ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

Western Australia is home to the highest rates of ‘wanderlust’ in the country, prompting the youth to travel far and wide before they return home to roost.

One of the main reasons why young Western Australians yearn for the unknown is the prohibitive cost of getting blind in the Perth, their capital and the most isolated city on the planet.

Despite having locally-made delicacies such as Emu Export, Little Creatures and San Cisco, the cost of those products is grossly inflated by the relatively high income of residents thanks to the mining boom.

Arriving in London last week, 24-year-old traveller Mark Garrity has found a place to crash on his brother’s mate’s floor in the north-eastern suburb of Chalk Farm.

“It’s pretty flash around here. There’s a shit tonne of Russians here and they’re all rich. Just like all the foreign investors back home, they’re rolling in it,” he explained.

Like most people under 30, the Tame Impala fan is almost completely broke and shouldn’t really be travelling in the first place.

That valid point prompted him to duck down to his brother’s mate’s local dive bar, The Garden Arms in nearby working-class Hampstead Heath.

“I tried to be sensible and order a pint of Stella, you know, because that’s what domestic abusers drink over here because it’s cheap as chips and the bloke came back and asked for 11 quid,” he said.

“I almost fainted! How cheap! You know how much a pint of Bush Chook costs in a flash bar in Perth? At the Royal Freshie in Peppermint Grove, they’d pick you up and rattle every last cent out of you for a Little Creatures stubby,”

“Then they’d say you’re too pissed to have another one.”

Mark says he has plans to head back to Perth one day, but that will be the day he hangs up his drinking jacket for good. Another than the odd pint after work or a weekend getaway to Margaret River, he says sinking tins in Perth is just too expensive.

More to come.