So we farewelled the Seagulls as they headed back to the East Coast for a month and set course for Ledge Point, 90km km south and 100km from Perth…
We had booked Big4 Ledge Point Holiday Park some months in advance as a stopover before Perth and to ensure that we had somewhere to stay over the Australia Day Long Weekend and school holidays. We pulled into the cosy little caravan park that was all but desserted and set up on our site with no other vans or campers around us. And it stayed that way for a day-and-a-half. Then the holiday hordes arrived and it turned into sardine city.
The wind also blew up so we had to pull the annex in. No sooner had we done that than the neighbouring campers decided that it was OK to cut through our site between our van and the cruiser. This is extremely bad caravan park ettiquette and just not the done thing. Even after angling the cruiser to make it obvious people were still cutting through our site. It got to the point where Jo asked one bloke if he wouldn’t mind going around. He was quite polite about it and happy to do so but we then had to put up with his dickhead mate walking along the edge of the site pretending as though he was balancing on a tight-rope. No matter where you go there’s always a dickhead…
So dickheads and squealing hordes of kids aside… Ledge Point is yet another sleepy little coastal village. Not big enough to have a superarket or a pub but close enough to Lancelin, which does and Seabird, which has a tavern. Consequently we spent as much time away from the caravan park as possible.
The ray of sunshine in Ledge Point was the General Store. It was run by nice friendly folks and also acted as the petrol station, post office, mini-supermarket, tackle shop and take-away… They are rightfully proud of their home-made sausage rolls and pasties.
Now… we were still on the hunt for a genuine Cornish Pasty (ever since South Australia) and thought that this might be the one. It was close but the filling, although generous, sumptious and quite delicious was still not the traditional filling of fimely chopped meet, finely diced potato, onion and swede (carrot optional but frowned upon) with lots of pepper and salt… Jo had one of their sausage rolls that she greatly enjoyed.
Thankfully the Australia Day hordes disappeared as quickly as they arrived so we did a day of relaxation and quiet before we left. The hordes packed and left so quickly that Jo remarked to one of the permanent site dwellers there, “I wonder what I said to make them go?” To which the permanent resident said, “I don’t know but I wish you;d have said it earlier!”
So… all in all, we didn’t have the best time possible in Ledge Point, which is unfortunate because it could have been quite nice under other circumstances. Our disappoinment was rounded out by missing out on Pub night. We were going to duck down to Seabird to the tavern but after having driven down and seen it, coupled with a lot of bad reviews, we decided to head back to Ledge Point Store and get hamburgers instead. It proved to be a good choice…
We had originally planned to stay at Lancelin but decided against it in favour of Ledge Point. Despite this we always planned to at least visit Lancelin. This was mainly due to us listening to an audiobook ( when we were driving north towards Darwin ) which was partly set in Lancelin and the vast sand dunes on the edge of the town. The audiobook was called ‘Honeybee‘ about a young transgender lad coming to terms with who he is growing up with his single mum in a life of poverty and hardship. It was a very good listen and gave us a preview of the Lancelin sand dunes some months before we got to visit them in person.
Lancelin is bigger than Ledge Point and has a slightly more vibrant feel to it. This is fuelled by the massive sand dunes outside, which are a mecca for trail bikes and dune buggies, and the broad windy beach that is perfect for kite surfers
We drove out to the sand dunes first and found a large flat sandy area with a number of trucks and trailers offering trail bikes and buggies for hire. There riders and drivers zipping over the dunes in the distance and the whole place looked like a hive of activity. We weren’t tempted to do any dune riding ourselves but it was worth it to see firsthand the setting for part of the audiobook we had listed to.
Following the dunes we headed back into the township and down to the beach. The beach was probably the first pure white sand beach we had seen on the West Australian coast. The beach was backed by a long green grassy park area so we wandered down with a coffee from the coffee van at the Lancelin caravan park.
The beach at one end turns into a spit that juts out towards Edwards Island before turning a corner and joining with another beach beyond. This is the area where the kite surfers congregate and use the shallow transverse waves that come around the island to perform their aerial leaps and stunts. It was really quite mesmerising watching them duck and weave amongst each other and recover from a dunking after a bad landing.
The day out at Lancelin provided us with a much welcome respite from the holiday hordes waiting for us back at Ledge Point. It also served to fill out our imagined version of Lancelin based on the audiobook we had listened to. It iturned out to be not too different from what we expected and in hindsight might have been a better pick than Ledge Point… but then again school holidays and school holidays everywhere!
Gravity Discovery Centre
After enjoying a day at Lancelin, avoiding the holiday hordes back in Ledge Point, we turned our attention to how we could avoid them even more. To that end we turned our attention inland, away from the coast, and made a day trip out to Gingin, 70km to the south-east.
We noticed that a little south-west of Gingin there was a placed called the Gravity Discovery Centre so we headed there first. Now the strange thing about this attraction is that it is basically in the middle of nowhere and with not much signage. Driving there you turn in on a dirt track and drive through a bith of scrub until, quite suddenly, a 45m high tower leaning at 15° appears quickly followed by the main building and an observatory. By contrast, the Leaning Tower of Pisa leans at only 5.5°.
The Gravity Discovery Centre is very much along the lines of Questacon back in Canberra. It is a hands-on science discovery centre focussed on ‘gravity’ with loads of interesting and entertaining exhibits and working experiments.
Despite being school holidays there were very few visitors when we were there, which was good for us because we had the exhibits to ourselves and no waiting. The exhibits and displays are quite enthralling and well designed to teach and inform in a fun and interactive way.
Upon entry you are provided with two ballons that you can fill with water and drop from the leaning tower from as far up as you dare. With both of us having a dread fear of heights it was a daunting task to climb the 10 stories of stairs to the top in the open air structure. Jo made it to level 3 before releasing her balloons and Rob made it to level 8 before succumbing to the height and dropping his water bombs, It was very satisfying to watch them fall burst on the ground. Of course, the idea is to have a small one and a large one and drop them together to repeat Gallileo’s famous Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment to prove that all objects fall at the same rate.
Aside from the fun aspect of the Gravity Discovery Centre, the statis displays also included a large meteorite, which was very cool and even cooler was the decommissioned ‘NIOBE’ gravitational wave detector that helped detect and prove Einstein’s theory regarding gravity waves. Very, very cool!
The Gravity Discovery Centre was a very unexpected and enjoyable way to spend the morning and exercise the brain a little.
Gingin
After switching our brains back on at the Gravity Discovery Centre we headed in to Gingin, which is a small agricultural town and. surprisingly, only 65km north of Perth.
The township is centred around the very well kept Granville Park that features a replica water wheel near a shallow stream that would not look out of place in Oxford or Cambridge in England. The axle of the water wheel is the original axle and would have driven a flour mill back in the day. It sits beside the stream, which flows beneath a small footbridge and is home to a flotilla of ducks and numerous other native birds that congregate downstream from the weir at the bridge.
At the edge of the park is the CU@Park Cafe, which is a quirky little cafe and shop full of curios and bits & pieces. We enjoyed a coffee and muffin there whilst overlooking the park and enjoying the serenity before heading back to the holiday hordes at the van park.
Beside the cafe is a replica stone arch built from limestone blocks saved from an original arch from Cheriton House back in the 1880’s. The waterwheel, stream and arch are reminders of Gingin’s agricultural history and fit well into a small town that retains an historic appearance in a contemporary setting.