Mandurah

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22/10/08 Wednesday Day 69
Today we’re in another new place, Mandurah, another 30 kilometres south of Rockingham. Found our caravan site pretty easy with the help of my sat nav on my phone. Thank god for that. Otherwise I’d be driving around for ages trying to find places. First place to visit was the Abingdon Miniature Village which is basically a biggish enough pretty garden with miniature English style house models placed around it and it’s only up the road from the caravan park which itself is a few miles outside the city. It also has a maze in it. We weren’t sure what we had gotten ourselves into when on arriving there were loads of nan and grandas being helped out of cars and buses into the place. Oh it also has a tea shop. I think this is where they were going cause there was none of them in the actual gardens. The gardens themselves were very nice. The model houses were about the size of big dolls houses. Small but nice a quiet. The maze was another story. Took us a small while to find the exit. Luckily we didn’t have to shout for help!
Next was to head towards the marina to take a boat cruise around the waterways and canals around Mandurah and hopefully spot some dolphins. On the way in to the city it started to rain. What the hell. And we had clothes out too! (not joking) It started raining pretty heavy once we set off. I even saw a lightening strike in the distance. The cruise was very good. It showed us the main marina and then it took us on a type of stars of Hollywood tour, except it was just rich people holiday homes placed on the canals with their boats tied up outside. These houses are massive. Our boat driver said that most of the houses have only 2 people in them. One of them was a 2 bedroom with a pool (indoor) and a cinema…..for 2 people. This house was as big as something you’d see in Beverly hills.
When we finished that we headed back to the van for a spot of lunch cause it was still raining and after getting right cold. Of course we were in shorts and t-shirts cause it was sunny in the morning. After that we headed to the “city” centre. Almost as bad as Rockingham but not quiet. Everything seems to close around 4pm, coffee shops included which is very strange. We also found Murphy’s Irish pub but we didn’t frequent. We headed off then to see one of the main shopping centres here. This was another huge place with 2 huge supermarkets and department stores.
That’s about it in this place really. It’s a big fishing town and there’s some huge developments going on here, apartments mostly. Plus there’s a load of fancy restaurants down by Dolphin Quay. The apartments here are going from 1 million to 4.5 million dollars. Some of the houses around the fancy canal area are going for over 5 mill.

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