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Enjoy Perth, then visit these fascinating places within easy reach of the capital

Enjoy Perth, then visit these fascinating places within easy reach of the capital

Beautiful Longreach Bay on Rottnest Island
Beautiful Longreach Bay on Rottnest Island

There are plenty of special places just a short trip from Perth, but New Norcia is special in a very special way. A Spanish Benedictine mission and monastery established in 1847, it’s still a shock to come upon its impressive buildings rising up from the flat paddocks of the wheatbelt.

The buildings, including the former boarding schools that served the surrounding farming families for generations, the bakery and olive house and the extraordinary art collection are filled with the history of the region.

Just 90 minutes’ drive from the city, this was once a centre of Catholic outreach, a piece of old Spain in the middle of the new world. Today New Norcia is built around tourism, conferences and spiritual retreats. It is truly unique in Australia and worth a day or even an overnight stay to soak up the atmosphere. The museum and art gallery are probably the pick of the sites and you can also buy New Norcia produce such as olive oil and bread at the adjacent shop.

The New Norcia skyline
The New Norcia skyline

The original St Gertrude’s convent for girls and the boys’ school of St Ildephonsus were merged in the 1970s to become a co-ed college but it closed in 1991. Take a look at the statue of Dom Rosendo Salvado presented to New Norcia by the Spanish government in the 1960s. Bishop Salvado, as almost every West Australian school child learned over the decades, was the highly educated priest and talented musician who arrived in Fremantle in 1846 and walked through the bush, where he set up a mission to train Aborigines. In 1949 he went back to Europe to raise funds, returning in 1853 with three priests and 37 artisans to build the monastery.

It’s a wonderful story and you can learn it in detail through buildings such as the flour mill dating from the 1850s, the oldest surviving building in New Norcia and the Abbey church (1861) made from stones, mud, trees and wooden shingles.

Araluen Botanic Gardens

West Australian businessman and politician JJ Simons was a patriot and a huge Aussie rules fan, so when soccer and rugby began making inroads to Australia in the early part of the 20th century, he did what any good nationalist would do – set up an organisation to counter these invasive sports and build pride in “Australian made”.

A key part of YAL’s work building the intellectual and physical talents of young people was its holiday camp set up in 1929 in the beautiful Roleystone area in the hills about 30 minutes from Perth. Countless groups of schoolchildren spent holidays at Araluen, pursuing outdoor activities and roughing it in the log and stone Canadian-style cabins built there in the early years.

Tulips aplenty in Araluen Botanic Park
Tulips aplenty in Araluen Botanic Park

Volunteers worked hard to create stunning gardens and terraces in the well-watered 59 hectares as a memorial to YAL members killed in WWI. For the past three decades the park has been owned by the state government and operated as a botanic garden. The best time to visit is in the spring for the camellias, rhododendrons, tulips and stunning wisteria.

Araluen is one of several easily accessible spots in the Hills districts. Heavily timbered areas, waterfalls and orchards make driving through areas like Mundaring, Karragullen, Roleystone, Lesmurdie and Pickering Brook an attractive day trip from the city. There are good spots for hiking and picnics and plenty of options for foodies. There are more than 40 scenic drives, wine trails, wildflower trails, bike trails and walk trails and one of the world’s best long distance walk trails, the Bibbulmun Track.

You could try Lake Leschenaultia in the John Forrest National Park or if you don’t mind a dam, there’s the Mundaring Weir and No 1 Pump Station. A symbol of great engineering progress when it was completed in 1903 to pump water to the Goldfields, 700 km away, and a key part of the State’s history, it’s now also a tourist destination surrounded by walking trails deep into the bush.

The Swan Valley

In Western Australia, the planting of vines goes back to the settlement of the state in 1829, with the first commercial wine vintage five years later. The Swan Valley, just half an hour from the city, has long been a premier wine growing area, a popular cellar-door trek well before vines were even planted in the state’s southwest around Margaret River. There’s a sense of history here, not just in the muscats and sherries and ports that have been synonymous with the valley for more than 150 years, but through the role it played in the earliest days of the colony. For example, the valley boasts Perth’s oldest standing church, All Saints at Henley Brook built in the 1830s.

But wine tasting and hearty lunches at outlets, many still run by descendants of their founders, are the Swan’s real focus. Names like Houghton, Sandalford, John Kosovich, Pinelli Estate, Garbin Estate and Talijancich wineries have been producing wines such as verdelho, shiraz and chenin blanc since the 1950s. And there’s plenty of excellent produce to buy direct from growers at their backdoors or roadside stalls. The valley is also accessible by boat along the Swan River and there are good walking and cycle trails, plus animal and reptile farms and mini golf for the kids.

Rottnest

Writer Robert Drewe has written emotively of Rottnest, the island 18km off the coast that West Australians can never quite fall out of love with – no matter how expensive the accommodation gets and no matter how many day-tripping tourists crowd the ferries. There’s nothing quite like a few days at Rotto in singlet, shorts and thongs to free the spirit but even a few hours are still fun. Don’t bother going unless you want to swim in water so crystal clear that you can indeed look over the side of a boat and count the grains of sand on the ocean floor. There’s a carefree mood on the island.

Writing in 2013, Drewe suggested the real reason so many Perth people get misty-eyed about Rottnest is that it was where they first had sex. Certainly Rotto for generations was where young people camped or lived in basic bungalows (where quokkas were a real and present danger) at the end of school or university.

Today it’s more up-market. WA tourist authorities made sure Roger Federer got to the island three years ago and the selfie the tennis star posted with a quokka was a sensation, promoting Rotto to an international audience. Perth people complain that they are being priced out of accommodation on the island, which makes day trips a good option. It takes 25-minutes by ferry from Fremantle or 90 minutes from Perth’s Barrack Street Jetty. Once there you will walk, cycle or bus to one or more of the stunning 63 beaches because cars are banned.

Don’t miss the bakery, which has almost mystical status in WA. Decades ago if the mainland was struck by bread strikes, desperados would make the trip to Rotto and the bakery to get fresh bread. And don’t get West Australians started on the special joy of waking up at Rotto for an early swim followed by a walk to the bakery for that first loaf of still-warm bread.

York and Toodyay

Historic well at the Old Newcastle Gaol Museum, in Toodyay
Historic well at the Old Newcastle Gaol Museum, in Toodyay

There are splendid examples of colonial architecture in York, just an hour or so from Perth. It was established in 1831 as the first inland European settlement in Western Australia and has some wonderful Victorian and Edwardian buildings. The Old Post Office, the Town Hall, the York Residency Museum, Settlers House and the Old Gaol and Courthouse are all worthwhile. There are good walking trails and in spring some stunning displays of canola in the surrounding paddocks. The historic town also has a strong community vibe with many Perth people opting to retire there or buy weekenders. You can still get a building block close to the centre of town for around $65,000.

There are regular festivals but the big one is the September York Festival billed as “one of the Wheatbelt’s major festival events”. Previous festival attractions have included the Running of the Lambs, a maze, a garden art trail, makers markets, comedy and live music.

Just 45 minutes away in the Avon Valley region is another pretty inland town, Toodyay. There are cafes and pubs, shops and walking tracks, wineries and restaurants and wildflowers in the spring. Like York, there’s a strong sense of history with stories of bushrangers and convicts from the earliest days of European settlement.

Discover where the legend of Moondyne Joe, arguably the State’s best known bushranger, who was transported to the penal colony in the early 1850s, began. He was granted a ticket of leave on arrival and settled in the Avon Valley but it didn’t take him long to be locked up in the Toodyay jail for horse-stealing and begin a life of escapes and attempted escapes.

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/special-reports/enjoy-perth-then-visit-these-fascinating-places-within-easy-reach-of-the-capital/news-story/7d0a8b74c0332bc29cc0ca17cf6da5da