There’s a well known phenomenon known as “the local tourist effect” which means that you can travel the world in search of the tourist experience but don’t explore your own back garden, as it were. This is certainly the case for us. We travel between our home and our holiday place and rarely explore the area between those two points. Well today we did and I thought it was worth documenting here.

Our first stop and main destination was the new mural at Wellington Dam. This is the largest dam mural in the world and is pretty breathtaking. This is the view from above and probably best shows the scope of the mural.

The mural was painted by Guido van Helton and was completed early this year. He based it on local stories and I love how it features the young, the elderly and families.

Guido is an Australian born artist who also painted the mural on the silos at Brim in Victoria.

I wore my Stokx Patterns passionfruit dyed Ninja hoodie top for this trip and I’m happy to report it was a resounding success – comfortable and the hood was fabulous for keeping my hair from blowing around.

There is a little roadway running along the bottom of the dam and this is the view. It’s really clever how that child appears to be playing with the box where the water outlet is.

I also loved the juxtaposition of the young family with the elders.

There’s a lot to see round the dam too. We used to camp at Honeymoon Pool when the kids were little and we swung past for old times sakes and decided that it would no longer be for us. Campsites close together and full of teenagers, which I like the idea of, but don’t want to be trying to sleep near them, thank you very much!

We went for a bit of a walk to a waterfall

and I followed Mark through the bush down to the river. He’s wearing chinos I made him for work, which have seen much better days, and a really old shirt made from the most wonderful cotton gauze that I got somewhere.

There’s also a quarry, used for picnics and abseiling. It reminds me of England, perhaps it’s the big oak tree.

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The dam itself is also pretty spectacular. The dam feeds a hydroelectric power station, with one water turbine. it’s the largest dam in the south west of Western Australia and is fed by the Collie River.

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I found a photo of the dam before the painting and thought it would be interesting to show it here as it also gives a magnificent view of the dam and surrounding area.

We began to wend our way (second) homewards but I made Mark stop so I could take some photos of Gnomesville, which is much loved by locals. He is truly appalled by this, but I think it’s charming.

It’s one of those things that started with a few gnomes, probably stolen from someone’s garden, and now it’s a real thing. You’ll see that various organisations have little gnome displays, including some military groups. What’s lovely is that the area is clearly treated with respect, there is little to no litter and the gnomes are left in peace.

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You’ll see the black broken gnome at the bottom of the photo above. I think it’s been deliberately done as it has things in its shoes. I hope so anyway. Love the bride and groom!

Mark and I enjoyed our little sojourn so much that we’ve decided to do more detours and I hope to show you a bit more of the wonderful state that we live in. Plans are being made…