Of ritz and riff-raff test

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This was published 15 years ago

Of ritz and riff-raff test

This rapidly changing town is a far cry from the place of his youth, writes Mal Chenu.

The Mandurah of my youth was a sun-soaked, holiday-shack town with dinghies patrolling the estuary, complete with child-filled inner tubes in their wake. At dusk, the same dinghies set out intrepidly to hunt for dinner.

We hooked blue manna crabs by the claws using coat hangers bent roughly for the purpose and cooked them up in pots on the foreshore. Small fires glowed along the estuary beach as clans ate, drank and laughed together.

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Today, Mandurah is one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the country with multi-million-dollar mansions on man-made canals and a thriving tourism industry. Mandurah is a potpourri of the classy and the bogan, with fine-dining establishments cheek-by-jowl with greasy-spoon takeaways.

An hour's drive south of Perth (or 40 minutes by train), Mandurah is an ideal stopover on the way to Margaret River and still offers the best fish and chips in the country.

Peel Estuary is about twice the size of Port Jackson and a cruise around the estuary and canals is a must. Bottlenose dolphins patrol the levy walls chasing fish, while herons, ospreys, shearwaters and spoonbills wing their way over the waterways. Semi-submerged shags dive for their dinner and pelicans sun themselves on rocks. Back on land, feather fanciers can wander along a boardwalk to the bird hide in the Creery Wetlands.

We sail with Bouvard Cruises. Captain Ron points out a waterfront holiday shack with eight bathrooms, an indoor pool and servants quarters he believes to be on the market for about $10 million, despite the recent property slump.

Most of the inferior properties go for about $3 million, he sniffs dismissively.

Cruises are booked heavily in December when canal mansions put on a festive Christmas-light display.

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Not far out of town is Abingdon Miniature Village - a must-see for Anglophiles. Named after the oldest continually inhabited town in England, the village is a labour of love for Ian and Sonia Klopper, who really only wanted a heritage tearoom. Thousands of hours of work later they preside over a disparate English hamlet of more than a dozen detailed model buildings. All are replicas of actual buildings on a one-10th scale.

A small wedding party emerges from a mini St Mary's Church, while a dinky model train crosses a minute bridge and goes past a minuscule Georgian manor as tiny horses look on from a little livery. Puny cricketers play (probably a Twenty20 match) on a petite village green. Small thatched-roof Tudor-style buildings squat among miniature gardens and the noise coming from the pint-sized Red Lion pub indicates it is only a short time until closing.

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