Advertisement
Published: August 11th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Yallingup
Green room forming It was another glorious day with a clear blue sky and a gentle breeze, which hopefully mitigated the situation for the guy behind me who I successfully cheesed off at a set of traffic lights on the way to Busselton. I was in the right-turning lane, watching 2 traffic lights - one for going straight ahead, and one for turning right. In general, these were changing colour in sync, however at one point the straight ahead one was green and the right turn one was blank. What does that mean? Straight ahead only? Turn right but with caution? Turn right with right of way? I decided to go for the dithering option, which seemed to incur the wrath of the guy behind me, judging by the fact that he started pounding his steering wheel with both fists in cartoon fashion.
Busselton has a reputation as a family resort, and is well worth visiting for its 2km-long jetty. It was very tranquil indeed, with the sea calm and shallow. The jetty itself has a guard rail on one side but is completely open on the other, so you could dive off if you were so inclined (or unbalanced). I tried not
to flirt with this idea, given how dodgy my sense of balance is. There is a train that runs the length of the jetty, presumably scattering all walkers from its path, but it wasn't running due to lack of funds. An underwater observatory is located right at the very end, but I gave it a miss, reasoning that I should have plenty of opportunities when I'm going up the west coast to observe marine life via snorkelling.
Heading west from Busselton, I came to Yallingup, which had some excellent-looking surf with plenty of surfers bobbing about waiting for the perfect wave. Caves Road led south from here into the Margaret River region proper. There was little traffic, so I was able to potter along slowly, passing a number of gorgeous vineyards that caused me to stop and snap.
Near the town of Margaret River, I made a quick detour back to the coast to see Prevelly beach, where the Margaret River Classic surfing championships are held, then returned inland to find the YHA. I was a little shocked to find that a dorm bed cost $27.50, i.e. virtually the same price as I'd paid in Melbourne, but it
turned out that everything is expensive here just because it's Margaret River. As a popular wine-lovers' retreat, and with an associated swathe of upscale restaurants, prices have been forced up by the influx of the monied classes from Perth.
At about 6:30PM there was a power-cut, which plunged the whole town into darkness. The common room/kitchen immediately sprouted some candles and became the obvious gathering point for people. I headed out to a bottle shop to buy some beer, as I couldn't see how else I was going to spend the evening. With no light pollution, the sky was amazingly clear and I even found Orion off to the west, turned 90% as though drunk. Just as I was returning to the hostel, the power came back on, which resulted in the common room/kitchen clearing out and I was left with 12 bottles of Swan to dispose of. Fortunately the 3 other guys in my dorm rose to the challenge of helping me out, and we sat watching the Australia vs Holland football friendly until the beer had run dry.
Before retiring, I noticed that the hostel car park contained no less than 7 identical Corollas from Bayswater
Rental. Yet more evidence that the well-trodden paths in this country really are well-trodden.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.08s; Tpl: 0.023s; cc: 14; qc: 33; dbt: 0.0378s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Wormbat
Wormbat
sweet..
wow ! i was totally hypnotised by ur photos.... the surf n sea !! pls cut down on photos of city building (in ur recent blog) if possible :)