Busselton - update & leaving

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Busso – an update and getting ready to get back on the road again!

Sunday 1^st April 2012

It has been a while since our last entry and now we need to fill you in on a few more happenings here over the past few weeks. Apart from my exploits to help get the 2012 vintage in from many of the Margaret River Region Wineries which will ensure a successful vintage for all you wine lovers, we have been busy attending and doing ‘other stuff’ as well.

One of the really good events we went to was the Dunsborough Festival where we attended both of the night concerts, the first being “A Night of Classics” with The Cape Divas. The Cape Divas are an exciting vocal duo made up of Sussane Siegrist - a graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium Opera School, and Lisa Knight - a graduate of WAAPA. Both successful soloists, with national and international experience the girls have exceptional voices and charisma and we enjoyed their show enormously. It made a big change for Kiwi Ben and I from our evenings of country music over a beer! The second concert evening was “Jazz and the Blues” and featured well-known local musicians and again we had a great time finishing off the night with a classic U2 number that got the whole crowd to their feet.

St Patricks Day was always shaping up to be a ‘little bigger’ than our normal daily routine. We had neighbours who were keen to get together that evening for a drink and a singalong, so Kiwi Ben and I took Ben (one of the neighbours and no, not another Kiwi) to the pub for a ‘warm up’. We had a fantastic night of jokes and hilarity attracting a few other travellers to join us, Kiwi Ben entertained us all as usual with his guitar.

This weekend we have had the West Australian leg of the Australian Rally Championships based out of Busselton. During the day the cars have been competing in the forest legs of the Rally around Nannup and at night time trials have been held in the park across the road from our campsite in the “Kookaburra”. We have had a full weekend of motorsport and without any cost at all which I believe is a rarity in the world of Rally sport. I apologise for all the car pics in the forest, but I loved the colours and the dust in so many of the photos I took I could not cull down any further from the 50 odd pics I took !

Busso has been a great stop for us and we feel we have become part of the community, there are many shops where we know the staff or owners, we don’t need to ask where this, or that, is – we know, and find ourselves giving directions to others. Yesterday we had the terrible news of a local person being taken by a 4mtr shark and on inquiring who it was we discovered he was someone we knew of. The second fatal shark attack in ‘our waters’ since we arrived first in late Nov 2011, and the 4^th in WA.



It would be remiss of me not to mention the following person we have become acquainted with whilst here in Busso, Kiwi Bin, aka, Cookie, Fatso, or just plain Ben (amongst other names!).. has been travelling around Australia for 6 years now, working mostly in the far North of Qld. Travelling in his mobile home which is named ‘Sunshine & Happiness’ look out for him and when you do meet up make sure you have a bottle of Cape Gay Rum on you ! Ben has worked as a cook in Mt Isa, for a Contract Mustering crew on Cattle Stations in the far north, and in Mining camps with plenty of other ‘experiences’ in between, Ben is one of the true gentlemen of the road. Kind, sharing and thoughtful, full of bad humour and worse jokes, entertaining and full of life, Kiwi Bin has been a great friend to us all and great company, hopefully it will not be long before our roads cross again – which I know they will.



But…it is time, we are ready to move on, the weather up North is now no longer averaging in the 40’s but in the much more tolerable mid 30’s. The wet season is coming to a close and so we have decided to leave Busso and a very good friend, Kiwi Ben, on the 16^th April. It will not be an easy day for us, but it will be the start of the next part of our adventure which we are looking forward to.

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