Somewhere Else

Yesterday’s geodesic dome isn’t the only interesting building along the main street of Beverley. We showed you several others last July and here are a few more, to show what you are missing if you haven’t been there yet. Walking along the street towards the Avon River is like walking back through time.

Near the dome there is the Aeronautical Museum above, which has interesting displays of early aviation in Western Australia. The plane outside is a 2-seater Vampire jet trainer, one of about 200 built in Australia. Further along the street this proud building which was built in 1898 as the Council Chambers:

Further along you come to this old Beverley Roads Board building from 1908:

Last Friday we visited the small country town of Beverley, Western Australia. It’s a town with many historic buildings along the main street, but maybe the most striking is this modernistic geodesic dome.

It was built in 1968 to be the showrooms of a Holden car dealership. Today it is a service station, and the owners have just finished restoring the building to as-new condition. We even had a chat with them about the American architect and inventor R Buckminster Fuller, who worked out the complicated mathematics that underlie these interesting structures.

Oddly enough, this isn’t the only geodesic dome in Western Australia. At the Gravity Discovery Centre near Gingin, there is another one. It has a very different design from the one in Beverley, and houses an art gallery which concentrates on cosmology.

It must have been a good year – this Austin Princess and Carapark Superb caravan were both built in 1947. The amazing retro touring rig belongs to Alan and Christine S of Bendigo.

Caraparks have a distinctive shape – sometimes unkindly described as an electric toaster – which continued through into the 1960s. The 1947 Carapark Superb was unusual in being built of steel, rather than wood, aluminium or fibreglass used in most vintage caravans. The tow car is actually an Austin Sheerline with Princess trim, and has a 4 litre, 6-cylinder engine which easily copes with towing the Carapark.

For more information about this rare 1947 rig, see our write-up in the July 2010 issue of Caravan World magazine.

If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you will know that we have a thing about seeing the full moon rise. So yesterday we enjoyed seeing the full moon, but this time there was an extra bonus. This was no ordinary, monthly full moon – it had a partial lunar eclipse.

Without getting too technical about it, an eclipse is an entirely different phenomenon from the regular phases of the moon. The phases occur because the moon has a sunlit and a dark side, and most of the time you can see a bit of each – changing from full moon to gibbous to crescent to new moon, as the moon revolves around the earth. A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes through the earth’s shadow.

Yesterday’s eclipse was visible from many parts of the globe, and was at its best around 7:30pm (WST) in Perth, Western Australia. Here’s how it looked at different times:

And in case you are wondering, we didn’t use any sophisticated equipment to take these photos. Just a compact megazoom (20x) camera. We didn’t even use a tripod, but just leant against a convenient post. The only trick is to use manual settings. The camera sees all that dark sky and selects a very slow shutter speed, which makes the moon appear as a featureless white disk. At much faster shutter speeds, the seas and craters become more visible, and it’s easier to hold the camera steady as well.

Yesterday we drove from Perth to Beverley, stopping off in the historic town of York for a coffee. York is about 90km east of Perth and has some fine buildings, including this very imposing town hall. It was built in 1911, refurbished recently, and now houses the town’s tourist information centre.

You immediately sense that York was a very important town in the early 20th century. But a sign in the main street amusingly suggests that the 1890s were a much quieter era:

Last weekend we were roaming around Perth city centre and came across something that you don’t see every day – some Roman gladiators fighting to the death. Okay, maybe not to the death.

They were part of a display publicising the exhibition “A Day in Pompeii” which is currently running at the Western Australian Museum. The gladiators were members of the Grey Company, who mostly perform historical re-enactments of the Dark Ages and medieval period.

If you haven’t been to Margaret River to see the CowParade, time is running out. This colourful and amusing exhibition of painted cows only runs till 27 June.

We’ve shown you quite a few of the cows, and here’s one more to whet your appetite – literally, since it is at the Margaret River Chocolate Company. In keeping with the space invaders theme, the cow is titled “Moo-vaders”. It’s by Nathan Morris.

Although the Margaret River region is famous for its wines, there are also many other culinary treats. We reveal some of our favourites in the article “Sweet Treats” in the July 2010 issue of Caravan World magazine:

Photographers like street art, since it often makes interesting and colourful photos. But sometimes the subject is especially close to their heart. This one is in Perth on the corner of James and Williams Streets, on the edge of Northbridge.

Outside the Art Gallery of Western Australia there is this amusing statue by Gerhard Marcks. It is titled Der Rufer (German for The Caller/Shouter) and depicts a man calling across the river for the ferryman. But Der Rufer has gone AWOL at present. Instead there is now a big box:

Maybe The Caller is inside the box, for protection while renovation and development work is going on nearby. As a bonus for art lovers, the box has been painted by local street artists. The painting of the three-eyed man with a pipe is by The Yok, who we mentioned last week. There is another of Yok’s artworks – also with a three-eyed man – on the barriers around some nearby building renovations:

Here is a mystery vintage caravan. Even the owners, Mark and Maureen P of Bendigo, haven’t been able to pin down its exact origins. If you look back at yesterday’s entry on a 1949 Don caravan, you will see an immediate resemblance.

But this one is not a Don, since it differs in many details. It appears to be a one-off, home built caravan from the late 1940s – and roughly based on the shape of a Don. You can read more about this caravan in the July 2010 issue of Caravan World magazine: