Saturday 8th October
It is only 65 km from Bunbury down to Busselton. If you look at a map of Australia, Busselton is at the very bottom of the fish hook that forms Geographe Bay about 200km south of Perth. At the point of the fish hook is Cape Naturaliste which we intend to visit from Busselton.
As mentioned earlier, the countryside and roads around this area are very similar to New Zealand. Busselton is right on the coast, and is the main town of a long chain of small villages that all run into one another and stretch out for miles along the coast. It all has the feeling of sleepy seaside towns, with several flash new retirement villages springing up.
Our motor camp is about 100 meters from the beach on the main road about 8 km south of Busselton. After setting up camp and having lunch, we drove down into town to the water front, to go for a walk along its famous 1.8km jetty. At the end of the jetty is an underwater observatory which we wanted to visit. Judging by the thousands of people both on the jetty and around the restaurants at the shore end, the jetty and observatory were obviously very popular attractions.
As part of the attraction, a small train takes passengers from the shore out to the observatory at the end of the jetty. To get access to the jetty, you had to first of all buy a ticket at a ticket office. We got to the jetty at about 2.00 o’clock and joined the queue, only to be told there were no available spaces until the 4.00 o’clock tour, which didn’t finish until about 5.45pm. As the weather was looking a bit threatening we decided to leave it for the day, and instead booked tickets for the 9.00 o’clock tour tomorrow.
We decided to fill in our time by looking around town for a while, and then, because the weather was looking so threatening, headed back to the caravan and watched the England vs France Rugby World cup game. After that we went for a walk along beach and while doing that, the weather finally broke and we got caught in the start of heavy rain and thunderstorms which lasted all night. Our first thunderstorm since being in Australia.
Sunday 9th October
Thankfully by morning the storm had blown itself out and we woke up to clear blue skies. 9.00 o’clock saw us on the jetty, and we were soon chugging along the 1.8km out to the observatory. The observatory is like a huge round concrete water tank with windows. It was made on shore then floated out to the end of the jetty were it was flooded and sunk to the ocean floor. It was then anchored to the ocean floor and pumped dry. It is in 8 meters of water and you descend on a spiral staircase to the bottom.
There are windows at various levels as you go down, so you can see different sea life at different levels.
It is set among the old jetty piles which are covered with barnacles and such like which attract fish. While we were there a huge school of yellow tail mullet was hanging around, as well as lots of other fish, crabs and jelly fish.
A fascinating experience, probably even better than seeing huge sharks and stingrays in an aquarium, as the fish we were looking at were all in their natural habitat. Why can’t New Plymouth do something like this?
After the observatory we drove around town and then out to the Geographe Marina where we ogled at all the million dollar plus houses with their equally expensive yachts moored at their front doors. On the way to the marina we passed an Ibis Rookery, with thousands of these big birds roosting and nesting in a few trees. The stink was almost overpowering. You certainly wouldn’t want to live downwind.
Then it was back to the caravan to watch the quarter finals of the World Cup, accompanied by beer and chips and dip. We didn’t know whether to cheer for the Springboks or the Aussies in the first game, but had no problems with the second game. Go the All Blacks.
Monday 10th October
This morning we headed out to Cape Naturaliste lighthouse at the western most tip of Geographe Bay. We had a very interesting tour which included climbing up inside the lighthouse and learning all about the hard life of the early lighthouse keepers. The reflectors for the 1000 watt light are made of lead crystal, and are valued at $11,000,000.
In the old days there were three lighthouse keepers employed at all times to ensure the light kept working. They had to wind the clockwork mechanism about every 45 minutes. Today the light is turned by a small electric motor. The whole revolving head weighs about 9 tons and floats in a bath of mercury.
From the Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse, we drove south for about 100km along the coast through the Leeuwin – Naturaliste National Park towards the Leeuwin Lighthouse at the south-western end of the park. Between them, the two lighthouses mark the most south western corners of the Australian mainland. On the way we drove through some beautiful countryside and bush land.
This area is part of the famous Margaret River wine producing region, and we passed some really flash looking wineries.
We took a short side road out to Hamelin Bay near the very south western corner of Aussie, and sat on the beautiful beach and had our lunch.
From there we drove on to the small town of Augusta on the south coast, and then on to the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, which marks the extreme south western corner of Australia, and is also the point where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet. The guy at the information desk at the lighthouse told us the wind blows there 360 days of the year, and today was one of them. Great place for a wind farm!!!
From there we drove back to Busselton via the inland road through the Wine Town of Margaret River. On the way we decided we couldn’t pass through this famous wine growing region without sampling some of the local produce, so called in at a couple of Wineries.
The first one we stopped at was really flash, and they gave us some tiny sample tastes of their produce which we both thought tasted something like battery acid mixed with horse piss. No wonder New Zealand wines sell so well in Australia.
We rushed on to the next one hoping to wash the horrible taste out of our mouths. This was a much more ordinary looking establishment and their wine was lovely, although it took us about 5 lots of sampling to get the taste of the first one out of our mouths. Although we are not big wine drinkers, we staggered out with three bottles, and continued our trip back to Busselton. A real neat day’s sightseeing.
Tomorrow we will leave the west coast of Aussie after first seeing it at Derby on the 24th July, and start heading east towards Melbourne to complete our round trip. Our first stage will be south east to Pemberton about 150 km away for our next adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment