Seeing your own coastline through a visitor’s eyes is always revealing. In winter 2026 we took a few friends from Melbourne around the North Coast, partly to show it off, partly to gauge their reaction, which could not possibly have been more different to their local hipster hood of Collingwood.
The brief, unspoken, was simple. Can Perth’s newest coast impress people from one of Australia’s most self-assured inner-city scenes? Reader, we found out.
The soft open
We started with a Friday evening sunset and a few drinks at the Beachhouse in Eden Beach estate. Lucky us, we jagged a still evening, no wind, just pure sunset from the magnificent front balcony. We kicked a goal with that one. First impressions matter, and the coast turned it on.
Next morning we walked a few beaches and parks around Shorehaven and Amberton. The lookout, the beach walk, a juice at Oceans 27. Yes, bliss. The Victorians, to their credit, said so out loud.
Nature does its bit
Then further up the coast in the arvo to Yanchep National Park. Another winner. The water level was a bit low around the wetland parts, but the walk around the lake was fun, with plenty of birdlife and kangaroos to keep it lively. Kangaroos, it turns out, are excellent for tram riders. They do a lot of the work for you.
Where the hipsters relaxed
The Yanchep Inn was next, and this was where the Victorians felt most at home. The bar could be straight out of inner-city Melbourne: memorabilia-covered walls, a lively buzz, and a beer garden with such a relaxed vibe. A bit run down, but 100% authentic, and dating back to the 1930s. Some people-watching, beers on top, AFL from the MCG on the telly. You could see them mentally filing it under “acceptable.” High praise from Collingwood. If you haven’t experienced the Yanchep Inn, put it in the calendar.
And then, King Neptune
From there we went north. Now, I’d told the guys we were heading somewhere they hadn’t seen before. This was, of course, Two Rocks.
Driving the ten minutes north from Yanchep was easy. Explaining what we found there was not.
Because looming over the town, up on a hill, is a giant limestone statue of King Neptune. The Roman god of the sea. Complete with trident. Several storeys tall. Staring out over the bush.
Where do you even start?
You start, I suppose, with Alan Bond, Perth’s great dreamer of the 1980s, who bought 20,000 acres up here and decided the future was a place called Yanchep Sun City, riding the wave of America’s Cup optimism. The centrepiece was Atlantis Marine Park, opened Boxing Day 1981, built to look like a Roman amphitheatre, hence Neptune, with performing dolphins as the star attraction. For nine glorious years, dolphins leapt and crowds flocked and the future looked golden.
Then it closed in 1990. The dolphins moved on. The park was dismantled. And King Neptune was simply… left there. Fenced off, vandalised, glaring down at an empty hill for a couple of decades.
I watched this information arrive on my friends’ faces in stages. A giant Roman god. Left over from an 80s dolphin theme park. Dreamed up by a tycoon. Now just standing in the bush. The Victorians were scratching their heads, and I understood, because there is genuinely no sane order in which to deliver these facts.
Here’s the part that finished them off: it’s now heritage-listed. Restored in 2015, and in 2023 the whole Sun City precinct went on the State Register of Heritage Places. The giant abandoned sea god isn’t a mistake anyone forgot about. The state has formally decided he matters. He is protected by law.
Try explaining that to Collingwood.
The payoff
To resolve things, we headed to the Two Rocks Tavern, sat out on the balcony, and had a few more drinks. And it was spectacular. The marina, the setting sun, the still winter’s evening.
My mates had that unfamiliar look on their faces. A whirlwind of diversity, from the old, to the 80s, to the 2020s, all in a single afternoon. A 1930s pub, a heritage-listed theme-park relic, and a brand-new estate, within twenty minutes of each other.
A coastline with weird and wonderful moments for all. Even, it turns out, for Collingwood.