Gravity Discovery Centre

Gravity Discovery Centre, Gingin

At the top of the Water Balloon tower - too scared to stand up!

The view from the top (big pendulum in the foreground)

Daniel's dance moves

Tired sandboarders returning

Another fine day when we headed out of Perth this morning, a bit late because we had to do a bit of a shop (we go through 1 ½ litres of milk each morning!). Thanks to Robyn and Vin’s recommendation, we headed north to the Gravity Discovery Centre near Gingin which is pretty cool. It has a 15 level tower where you can drop water balloons from to discover what effect gravity has on how fast they fall (ie do balloons with different amounts of water fall at different rates?). Conor of course ran up and down the full extent of the tower (twice), Daniel made it to about three quarters of the way up, I almost turned around then too and made Nick carry my and Daniel’s balloons the rest of the way while I clung to the bannister and crept up. So I made it to the top, but only crawling around and holding out my balloon to drop it by my fingertips before hot footing it down again. We also got to look at the edge of the sun through a telescope, looking at solar flares (it was bright red!), and hear how the earth would be reduced to the size of a golf ball if sucked into a black hole, but weighing the same as it does now (!). I have to admit that I couldn’t take in a lot of it, but Nick loved it and the boys liked the water balloons.

After that, thanks to a further recommendation from Robyn and Vin, we headed north along the coast and stopped at Lancelin, a crayfishing port I think but also with big sand dunes that you can go sandboarding on. We wished we had tried it when we were staying at Fowlers Bay so took the chance here and it was really fun. Hard, (like snowboarding but on sand), and we’re now all covered in sand (you should see the car), but lots of fun. The woman in the surf shop who hired us the boards was also nice enough to let us know that each night there are quite a few people who just park their caravans in the area behind the main street (behind the shops) so we’d probably be fine there. It’s right next to the playground and skatepark (popular with the boys) and there are 4 others here as well, so we took the opportunity for a free camp so close as it was about to get dark. Apparently the local council is fighting with the caravan park which isn’t so appealing, so they’re turning a blind eye for the moment, lucky for us. Anyway it seems like a really nice little town (people are lovely so far!). We have a view not only of the playground, but of the town’s one and only ATM, for which there are quite a few advertising billboards – it’s 24 hours! Not sure if that might be a problem with people wanting to use it on a Saturday night but I’m sure it will be fine. Tomorrow we’ll be up early and out of their way to go and see the Pinnacles.