Last weekend, after farewelling Deb’s parents in Bunbury (60km north of Busselton), we headed east in pursuit of the cult-status civilization called “Gnomeville”.

Simone, from Enjoy Perth had directed us there after some comments I made in another post about garden gnomes and so we have been eager to find this place ever since.
The story goes that one person placed a gnome on the side of the road and over the years people from all over the globe and every walk of life has since been adding to it. Today, there is estimated to be more than 1000 gnomes of different shapes and sizes decorating the local landscape. After our visit, I would say this figure is a tad conservative as we guessed there might be at least double that number now.

We didn’t just want to turn up empty-handed, so on the trip we thought we might just grab a gnome from a local nursery and headed off to Bunnings. How astounded were we when this mecca of hardware and nursery supplies didn’t stock them? (They have certainly moved up in my opinion!) We continued driving, detouring a little to stop at Waldecks, a large nursery in Bunbury that had a few but were only concrete with no colour.

At this point we were becoming a little discouraged contemplating the notion that we may end up going to Gnomeville with nothing. However, on the way we stopped by our favourite nursery outside Picton and to our relief were met with a plethora of options. Now which one do we choose? We don’t want to be seen as scungy and yet we don’t want to pay a fortune for something that is going to sit in the bush. Such a dilemma.

That was until we found “Bruce” and we knew he was the one for our family. So we took him under our careful love and attention (the kids only dropped him a couple of times) and continued the journey. Less than half an hour later we come upon the 8th (Gnome-made) Wonder of the World thinking we would be the only ones to have traversed this trek, but soon found we would have to search for a parking spot.

These gnomes were just everywhere. Up trees. In groups. Under fallen logs. In their own custom-built houses. Wherever your eye could see stood a gnome of some description. And many of them had been inscribed upon or carried signs of their individual quests to arrive at Gnomeville. Scottish gnomes. Italian gnomes. Gnomes from every corner of the globe.

After admiring all these little critters and what they had to say to the world we found a special place for Bruce near a group of other gnomes who were fishing near a rambling creek. Fortunately Bruce is an extrovert and made friends easily so saying our good-bye’s wasn’t hard.

One day we’ll travel back to Gnomeville to check how Bruce is going but I have no doubts that he’s happy now. This is the perfect place for garden gnomes.