Blogs from Bunbury, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 4

The last few days of the house sit was spent doing all those little incidentals around the house and in the van preparing for another move. If we were ever thinking of relocating this would definitely be a spot high on the list of preferred destinations. The owners of the next house sit rang in a mild panic as there were issues with one of their passports and one of the dogs required an unexpected procedure after getting an infection in his eye. They needed to leave a day early but given we were just down the road it was an easy fix. On the day of their depature we hopped on over to feed the dogs and give one of them his medication. There doesn't appear to be a problem with the dog taking his ... read more

Prior to moving on Thursday morning we took a small drive to Rosa Brook. We arrived at the quaint general store and the owner came out to fill up the van (no self service, haven't seen that since I was a kid). The store was something to behold with the interior seemingly untouched since the turn of the previous century; bare wooden floorboards underfoot and unfinished wooden shelves displaying the fresh produce on offer. We then moved onto Margaret River for a walk up the main drag. The surroundings in this area are stunning which makes going for a wander all the more appealing. My ulterior motive for this stop in town was the independent music store which again left me lighter in the pocket. Our next destination was Bunbury as we have organised a few ... read more

It always seems easier to sleep by the coast and last night was no exception with the sea breeze acting as the perfect natural sedative. A good start to the day got even better when one of the elder statesmen next to us dropped off some filleted herring that he had caught yesterday; that's dinner sorted. Late morning we ventured all of 20 metres down to the beach at Flinders Bay. I was just about to yell 'shark' as we hit the sand but it turned out to be three or four stingrays doing their thing in the shallows. What looks to be a fishing beach with craggy rocks dotted along the way turned out to be a fantastic swimming beach. A small jetty took us out over the rocks into crystal clear water and we ... read more

Today we took a walk on one of the Park trails to a nearby cave; however, Rachel's suspicion turned out to be correct......we had been there before. We had visited the site and gone on a tour of the caves when we visited Margaret River in 2011. All was not lost as we took an alternative route on the way back to a cape which provided some magnificent views of the ocean. The afternoon was a quiet one but we decided to take another walk to find a trail to the beach that had been eluding us and yet again our navigation skills were off. Still we managed to find more impressive vantage points to look out towards the horizon and around to a rough looking cliff face above the beach. On a side note I ... read more

Bunbury 12th to 21st January 2012 Bunbury sits on the western end of the Leschenault Inlet. It was named after the botanist Jean Baptiste Leschenault who accompanied the French explorer Nicolas Baudin, the first to site this coast in 1803, and commander of the Geographe after which Geographe Bay is named. Bunbury Port was originally known as Port Leschenault. It gets better…In 1836, seven years after the founding of the Swan River Settlement (now Perth), Gov. Sir James Stirling accompanied an expedition by ship to explore the Port Leschenault and Busselton regions. Lieutenant Henry William St.Pierre Bunbury, (got to love that name!), then in charge of a military detachment in Pinjarra, ‘blazed’ the overland trail to meet his boss (The Govenor) in 1836 at Port Leschenault. It worked!, for his efforts, Gov. Stirling told the 24YO ... read more