Story and Photograph by Algernon
The last week of January, the Algernons went off to visit family in West Australia. It was the first time for about seven years that we’d all travelled to the West, though Mrs Algernon would go back each year. The cost makes it difficult for all of us to go. Mrs A’s mum is getting on an in her late 80’s and the juniors in their late teens. It was a time to reconnect with family they rarely see.
Mrs A grew up in a town famous for its wine and cheese, her father being principal of a high school there. I first went there when we returned from Europe in the mid eighties and found the place idyllic. However, each time we’d visit after, it would lose is a little of its charm. On our last visit, the Perth nouveau riche had basically destroyed the place. Nowadays the family lives elsewhere but that is a story for another time.
Perth doesn’t excite me that much but the south west of West Australia, is somewhere I can highly recommend to visit or holiday and we always enjoy when we go. We of course picked the hottest week in 50 years to visit. We stayed with friends of Mrs A in Bunbury as the town where her family lives is near mines and unfortunately the hotels, motels and even caravan parks of the town think that they can charge what they like because the mines will pay. For us it was only a 40 minute drive each way to visit and $10 in petrol and that was more favourable than $200 a night for a rat hole.
On one day another of Mrs A’s friends came to visit. She’s a deputy matron at a hospital in a wheat town two and half hours drive away. She had a five day weekend and chose to visit many friends on the coast. She popped in for the afternoon and to give her space, I took the Algernoninas for a drive to a place called Gnomesville in the Ferguson Valley about 40 minutes away from Bunbury.
Now Gnomesville started its life as the result of building a roundabout at the corner of Wellington Mills and Ferguson Roads near Donnybrook in 1995. It was built to supposedly alleviate the traffic at the intersection. This intersection I might add probably sees around 100 traffic movements a day. Apparently this traffic hazard was mentioned a part of a mock council meeting of year 7 students at Dardanup Primary school. Dardanup council somehow got wind of this and spent money on building the roundabout. This caused much discussion with the local community regarding its cost to “solve” the traffic problem in a deserted mill town.
Soon after its completion someone placed a gnome in the middle of the roundabout, one became two and soon there were enough for a football team so in winter the gnomes would play football and in the summer they’d play cricket. Eventually many would visit to see the gnomes causing distractions to the passing traffic. It was decided to move the gnomes to their present day hamlet on land adjacent to the roundabout. The land appears to be an abandoned rail reserve.
Nowadays there are many thousands of gnomes living in communities in the hamlet of Gnomesville and many more come to stay from visitors all over the world. The hamlet is maintained by the local Wellington Mills Community Association.
Somehow one of the brain dead of West Australia thought it would be a good idea on Australia Day to smash up all the gnomes at Gnomesville.
(1)The Bunbury Mail ran a front page headline “AUSTRALIA DAY GNOMESVILLE BATTLE” in the article it stated “A facebook page which invited more than 200 people to “smash up” popular Dardanup tourist attraction Gnomesville has been slammed by the police and the community.
The page, called Australia Day Gnomesville Smash Up, invited people to Gnomesville on January 26 to drink alcohol and smash the hundreds of gnomes which give the site its name.
More than 170 people have been invited and thirty-three people have said they may attend the event.
A second Facebook page was created in response called Australia Day Gnomesville Smash Up is Disrespectful to Aus Day.
Almost 200 people have supported the page which labels the planned vandalism as “un-Australian.”
Furthermore is stated that “Dardanup winery Bonking Frog Wines owner said Gnomesville had a positive influence on the area and many tourists sung its praise.
“We always have positive feedback, people think it’s a quaint and unique attraction for the South West,” they said.
“There’s a strong feeling of ownership from people that live in the Ferguson Valley – I think they would be personally affronted if anyone was to destroy Gnomesville.”
Bunbury police officer in charge said local police had operational plans in place for Australia Day.
He said the Gnomesville site in the Ferguson Valley was already part of their patrols.
Anyone caught vandalising the site will be charged by police. “
Now the brain dead of West Australia are renowned for using quokkas in Rottnest Island as footballs or as sexual objects should they be spurned by the equally brain dead.
Into action went the members of the Community Association to save the gnomes of Gnomesville from the ravages of the brain dead as the local community chose to have their Australia Day celebrations there instead.
The thing is that nearly everyone in the south west knew of the gnome bashing planned for Australia Day.
The Algernoninas and I enjoyed this trip to see the gnomes and much care and consideration has been taken to the placing of these gnomes in their communities as well as the messages left. We spent a while there looking at the gnomes with the heat in the end taking us in search of cool drinks and some delicious fresh local stone fruit from Donnybrook on the way back.
For some views of the gnomes you could look at these sites.
http://www.southwestlife.com.au/articles/gnomesville.html
http://www.fergusonvalley.net.au/Member%20Details?row=171341602
http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2011/03/01/3152393.htm
(1) Bunbury Mail 17/1/2012
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/g/garden_gnome.asp
Gives a whole new perspective to the “Human G’nome Project”.
I remember the day I arrived at St. Paul’s College at Sydney Uni all those years ago. I was somewhat perplexed but most impressed at how many gnomes there were distributed around the grounds, sitting astride roof ridges and lurking under leafy plants here and there. I soon discovered that part of the initiation process for freshers was to mount an expedition to the suburbs, country boys with utes were popular here, for the express purpose of divesting the good burghers of suburbia of their various gnomes and other garden ornamenta.
There were garden gnomes everywhere. You couldn’t spit without hitting one.
I remember the warden of Pauls, A.P.B. Bennie, a marvellous man in the old academic mould who first explained the depth in Blake to me; well he had two highly ornate but none the less deeply grotesque bronze frogs guarding his front door. Standing upright, holding spears from memory, they were about a metre high. I never did find out whether they were the spoils of an earlier fresher raid or whether they in fact reflected his or Mrs Bennie’s tastes.
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We have gnomes all though the Aloe Vera at work. Somesone personel gnome was held to ransom.
Did he have any tyre swans per chance.
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Algy, there was a guy called Komacha, don’t trust the spelling, thatl lived in Orange when I was a boy. He was one of the post war immigrants that came through the “Dude Ranch” I think.
He made a living recycling industrial waste into garden ornaments and decorations. Amongst his many lines was of course the almost ubiquitous tyre swan. He also made butterflys in various sizes up to about a metre in width. The next thing you know houses all over Orange have giant butterflys resting decorously on a front wall, or perched in the
corner of a verandah. He also made planters and sort of Rube Goldbergian water features that looked more like modern sculpture than anything else.
Endless ingenuity.
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I recall visiting a friend at Hillston some years ago, the early eighties I think. She had been posted there teaching. Some things I found odd. Like a 20 year old morris minor being sold for $7000, you could have knocked a 0 off for the same in Sydney and the house on an acre selling for $11k. The town of course was covered in these tyre swans of various shapes and sizes. There must have been a craft group or something producing these garden wonders to go with their gnomes and their concrete Nevilles.
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Ah, Waz. Parallel lives. In my final undergrad year at Sydney, I was on the Uni Farms at Camden. We had a ritual where we gnome-napped the good burghers’ concrete offerings and installed them on the wide median strip of the main street of the town. The ritual went on, as you say until there were many ute-removed little folk. Then we retired to the pub, had a rather large skinful and returned to the main street to watch mums and dads pick up their little coloured kin. Not easy in the throng. People took it rather well, I think.
Best gag was when someone (a vet I think) placed a large gnome next to a small tree and nailed a toilet roll holder plus roll next to him. Hilarious.
Many thanks for the piece, Algy – ah the memories.
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why thank you Emm, glad I’ve bought back some good ones for you.
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I suppose those innocent gnomes are almost the one thing that would be hard to find fault with. Perhaps that’s why the brain-dead could only think up of smashing them. I drove around there many years ago. The beer was drunk out of huge carafes, half gallons or something. I liked the Margaret River area.
The north of Perth was a giant cemetery, lots of dehydrated brains and giant spilling stomachs with chest-beating apes tattooed on them, or were they their girlfriends? The pubs, those pubs with shriveled peroxydiced divorcees lining up for the next chimpanzee disaster..
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Peroxided!
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Creative freedom.
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gerad, what are those Dutch pastilles called? They’re black, salty and tangy.
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Zoute drop, I think, VL. We have a lollie shop here in Bowral, you can find every kind of tooth damaging thing there, grandsons spend hours their with their two dollars whilst Gez and I have our Labor Lattes and read the papers…
Interesting story , alge.
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Mrs a and I were married in Maggie Creek, It had a charm in the 1980s and 1990s but has lost a lot of it over time. Agree about north of Perth though it does have some gems. The Pinnicles is worth a trip as was the tourquise sea at Jurein Bay.
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Gnomesville = The Australian Liberal Party.
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Thats a little hard on the poor defenceless gnomes Helvi
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Wonderful article, Algy!!! I’m going to go and have a little cry that you ‘understand’!!!
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Glad you liked it shoe.
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Unbelievable. Bill’s got his own town.
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There even a little Joe there if you look hard.
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