Busselton

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After leaving Albany on Saturday morning we had thought that we would stop overnight somewhere along the way to Busselton but even with strong winds and occasional showers we made great time and so pulled in on Saturday late afternoon.







Our freedom camp this week is a farm stay in the locality of Vasse, about a 20minute drive to the visitor info centre on the Busselton foreshore. The farm is a turf lawn farm at a cost of $15/night and Wendy, our host, is a lovely lady full of country hospitality. She kindly gave us some sweet and juicy oranges from her trees.







Vasse itself is promoted as being the fastest growing town on the west coast. There are many new housing estates, shopping centres, schools and hospital facilities being built and, as we would discover on our days around the Margaret River region, this is being replicated in a few of the other towns. It certainly appears to be an affluent corner of Western Australia.







Just as we started to set ourselves up the rain arrived – murphy’s law, as they say. We got wet!







Sunday morning was a “familiarisation” of the town centre; supermarkets, dump points, potable water points etc as well as a stop at the visitor information centre to pick up maps and brochures of the area. It was far too windy to even think about a walk along the iconic jetty so we will cross fingers for a better day so that we can finally say “we have walked the Busselton Jetty”.







After a quick lunch we drove to nearby Dunsborough and Yallingup on the Cape Naturaliste peninsula. Dunsborough town centre reminded us very much of Byron Bay in its feel and architecture.







The Caves Road travels from Busselton all the way down to Augusta and Cape Leeuwin. Apparently there are over 1000 limestone caves nestled into the Leeuwin/Naturaliste ridge.







Turning off Caves Road at Yallingup we ventured down Ngilgi Cave (pronounced Nilgi) which, it is said, was Western Australia’s first tourist attraction. In 1899, when it was discovered, tourists would clamber through bushland and be roped down a hole in the ground and by candlelight spend 8-10hrs exploring before being pulled back up again. The cave is quite vast, but thanks to boardwalks and stairways (steep, narrow and at times low) and electricity we took only 1hr to view the crystal formations.







Further on we stopped at Canal Rocks. The wind today has been quite a strong westerly at 30-40kmph so the waves were mammoth. As they rushed through the narrow canal opening to Smith’s Beach we were once again reminded of how small we are in the scheme of things. They powered on through with tremendous force, sending up spray and water high over the rocks. We got wet!







Back to the car to head “home” and the spray soon became a short, sharp, heavy cloudburst. We got very wet!

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