Hippy haven in WA
Sunday, March 6, 2011 at 04:38AM Less than two weeks ago I had a few days in WA. I’ve never spent time in Perth but our family had most of three months in the West 13 years ago. A prolonged camping trip that took our whole mob up the guts of the country, barely stopping till we reached Kakadu, and not there for long either, pushing on till we reached Kununurra, on the edge of the Kimberley, where we finally slowed right down.
The bulk of the three months was spent on the Gibb River Road, a taste of the good life in Broome after the austerity of the road (ice creams, outdoor movies) Exmouth, the Pilbara, Karajini, down to the southwest corner of the state and home across the Nullarbor.
This time my husband and I were alone. We had both been asked to speak at a conference in Perth (a first for us), which we did, and the people were gracious and generous and appreciative and lovely.
The minute it was over, we hopped in a little hire car and beetled down the coast to Yallingup – a hamlet about three hours drive south of Perth and just a bit north of Margaret River.
We stayed in a tiny stone cottage a few ks out of the town – hand built by a lovely ageing hippy surfie dude with a Hindu name and Buddhist prayer flags fluttering around his property. In the morning he meditated (we were welcome to join him but slept in instead) and then at midday, because, he said, he just felt that by then he needed a top up.
He had constructed four buildings over several years – felling as few trees as possible in the process. He meditated for three months before he cut down anything, he told us, just to get the feel of the place.
There is a stone cottage and a wooden cottage for people to stay in. These were fully booked at the time we visited, but he offered us the miniscule cottage that is really an annexe to his own place, and which he doesn’t usually rent out. The only problem, he had said on the phone, was that it had an outdoor shower.
When we got there, we realised that we had to share it with him. It was the loveliest shower I’ve ever been in: an old bathtub, surrounded by a flimsy lattice graced with bougainvillea. Standing under the cascade of solar-heated water, I looked past the papery pink blossoms to verdant tomato and pumpkin plants.
We had a lazy couple of days. We found the loveliest bakery in tacky Margaret River – WA’s answer to our favourite local, The Brunswick Green – complete with sagging seventies brown velour sofas, kitch memorabilia on the walls and a patchwork of doilies hanging at the edge of the verandah, offering protection from the hot sun.
We had a large lunch at a winery and went back to our cottage and slept. We swam at the more sheltered beaches – Gracetown and Smith’s Beach – in water as clear as glass, looking down to fine silver sand. There was no rubbish. There were hardly any people.
We walked on surf beaches where I felt as though I was caught in a Tim Winton novel. I’m used to Anglesea, which, notwithstanding its proximity to Bells Beach, never looked like this. Fierce breakers curling in in perfect formation and smashing violently down close to shore.
Our cottage was filled with stained glass windows created by our host. Glass that looked like mother-of-pearl, glass with flecks and ripples and seams of colour running through it – glass the like of which I had never seen before. Our windows, salvaged from a local chapel, were filled with flowers, with birds, with dolphins, with shining suns.
On our last evening we had a long talk to the creator of this little haven, as the night drew in, surrounded by his fledgling fruit trees and his statues of the Buddha. When he discovered we were Christians he asked a little anxiously if we belonged to a brand of Christianity that thought other religions were evil.
We reassured him and the talk rambled on – over children and divorce, Jesus and meditation, surfing and adolescence, anxiety and therapy and vegetable patches.
Next day we were off by six, for the long drive to Perth Airport, the flight back home and the very slight jet lag that accompanies one from the other side of this big country.
We’ll probably never be back there again, or speak to our host who sees part of his mission in life to provide a peaceful place for souls who need time and space to reconnect with themselves, the environment, God. But it is these brief encounters, which are some of the surprising gifts life dishes up, that I remember long after they occurred.
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