Blue Manna: Local Secrets, Honest Stories & the Real Mandurah
Nobody here says blue swimmer unless they're selling you something.
The estuary at the end of our street is about the size of the whole of Gateshead. It has its own crabs, its own name for them, its own season, and its own opinion about people who wade in with a scoop net in October. I found out every one of those the hard way, in front of a retired Alcoa man called Gaz who has lived two doors down since the first estuary bridge opened in 1986 and who has never once called me anything but Pom.
We came in November 2023, me, my wife and two kids, from Low Fell, on her nursing visa and the usual Pom promise of sunnier and cheaper. Sunnier is true. Cheaper is not, and I'm not going to pretend it is to sell you a book. Three years of being corrected over a fence turns into a fairly good guide to a place, so I wrote it down. It's not the tourist board. It's the estuary as Gaz sees it, with my mistakes left in so you don't have to make them.
What's in it
Blue manna, and the rules. Why the season shuts on the first of September and opens on the first of December, the size gauge, the bag and boat limits, why most of the early December crabs are undersize and when they come good, drop nets versus scoop nets, where Gaz sets his, and what happens if Fisheries turn up.
Four bridges, two called the old bridge. The Pinjarra Road bridge and the wooden one before it, the 1986 estuary bridge and its twin that opened in February, the new fishing platform on the eastern side, and how to tell which bridge a local means before you drive the wrong way.
Which side are you. Halls Head, Falcon, Wannanup and Dawesville against the town side, Coodanup and the canals, Lakelands and Meadow Springs up the top, and what each one says about the other. Including the bit where the Halls Head side is technically an island since the Cut.
Beaches by wind, not by name. Blue Bay, Falcon Bay, Pyramids, Town Beach, Avalon, Seascapes with the dog, the estuary at Village Beach, and Gaz's rule for reading the sea breeze so you're not the family packing up at half one.
The train, the Forum and getting about. Fifty four minutes to Perth Underground, the flat fare, the 591, 592 and 594 from the station, where to park at Lakelands, which shops are on which side of which bridge, and the Sunday you will regret driving into Perth.
What it actually costs. Rents and house prices on the beach side, what a lease renewal feels like, eggs, petrol, a pint, and the honest sums a family from the North East does before they come and after they land. No cheerleading.
The year, the way Gaz keeps it. Crab Fest in March, the boat show in October, the Arts Festival and Music Under the Bridge, Peel Thunder at Rushton Park, the Christmas lights on the canals by boat, the July cold inside a tiled house, and the first of December when every tinnie in Halls Head goes on the water at once.
Being a Pom here. One in ten people in this city was born in England. What that means in the pub and at the school gate, what locals are sick of us saying, and how to be the incomer people don't roll their eyes at.
How it works
An ebook of about sixty pages, download link straight after you pay, opens on your phone at the jetty. Crab rules, train fares and bridge names all change, and Gaz will tell me the day they do, so the book gets rewritten and every past buyer gets the new copy for nothing. One payment, updates for life.
Who this is for
Families in the UK doing the sums on Western Australia and wanting the sums done by someone who has actually paid Halls Head rent. Poms already here who still say swimmer. People in Perth who come down for a weekend and only ever see the foreshore. And anyone who grew up on this estuary, left, and wants to argue with a Geordie about which bridge is the old one.
Gaz says the crabs don't care what month it is in England. He's right about that as well.
Download it now, free updates for life
Instant download. Any device. Written under the pen name Jason Boardman.