Saturday, November 24

We went to an open air market in Dunsborough. There were lots of Christmas crafts and it seemed so odd to see Santa and Snowmen on things when we were experiencing 26 degree Celsius weather. The market had a combination of flea market tables and craft tables – some of the things were interesting and we had fun walking around looking at everything. I’ve been looking for Christmas ornaments but the ones we saw at the market were things that could be made anywhere so I passed them up. John was wearing his Tim Horton’s ball cap and one of the vendors asked where in Canada we were from – he recognized the Tim Horton’s name as he had worked on the ski hills in Kelowna and Banff.

When we got back to the condo, John and I walked across the street to the Flametree Winery . We sampled a few of the white wines and purchased one bottle. A lot of the wineries seem to have an “artist in residence” and Flametree was no exception. After buying the wine, we chatted with him for a while and watched as he was painting. Finally, we decided to head back to the condo and then go for a walk. We walked up the road on the bicycle/walking path and were noticing how many snails there were on the path. Just as we said that, we were passing a signpost and there were snails all over it. Very odd!

We went looking for more kangaroos and saw 3 in the distance but not in photo range. We also saw a western rosella (a type of parrot) hiding in the long grass – not a very good photo op walk. To our surprise, when we got back to the condo, we had a visiting rosella in the peppermint trees outside our balcony.

Sunday, November 25

We headed for a car show and boot sale in Busselton. It was fun seeing old cars that we recognized (except for the names). My favourite old car was a 1962 Valiant with a push-button automatic – just like my parents had after the station wagon they had before it burned up. There were motorcycles, off-road vehicles, street cars, vintage cars and antique motors. For entertainment, they had a car drop where they hauled a car up into the air with a crane and then dropped it as many times as it took to really destroy it. The car we saw took 3 tries before it was totalled. We spent a few hours there and then made a stop at a farmer’s market before heading back to the condo.

When we were driving back, I decided to count the number of Christian denomination campgrounds along one stretch of the road. There were 12 religious camps and 1 Scout camp. Pretty impressive considering the properties all are waterfront with a beautiful white sand beach along Geographe Bay. Lucky campers!

Monday, November 26

John and I are travelling to Perth for 4 nights by way of the Australind Train from Bunbury to Perth. We loved the Margaret River region – hope Perth is as enjoyable! More to come on Tuesday and the following days – it’s hard keeping up when we’ve so little time to explore.

Thursday – John and I headed out early to go to Ngilgi (pronounced Neelgee – hard g sound) Cave. When we got there we thought it was going to be really busy as there were two (or more) buses there. Once we got closer to the cave, we discovered that it was a school tour. I can’t believe how well behaved the Aussie kids are when they are on a field trip. Single file, no pushing and having lots of fun – reminded us of the old days when we were kids *g*

Our tour started at 10 and was a “semi-guided” tour. There were a dozen people waiting for the guide – we could hear the sound of drumming and digeridoos coming from the direction that the school group had gone and were told they were attending a Koomal dreaming performance. Our guide, Mark, led us to the opening and explained the history of the cave. As so many other caves have been, it was found when a rancher was hunting stray horses and almost fell into the hole. The cave has been operating as a tourist site for 112 years! Mark led us down the first set of very steep, uneven steps and explained the pathways. He then told us we were free to roam about the cave for as long as we wanted but that it usually took 45 minutes to go through. It was fantastic! The temperature is a constant 20 degrees Celsius so it was warm enough without being too warm. There were a lot of places with uneven footing but we didn’t have any mishaps. 90 minutes later, we emerged into the sunlight. There are quite a few caves in this region, but not enough time to explore all of them.

Shawl formation in Ngilgi Cave

After we got back to the car, we drove to the surfing town of Yallingup – didn’t see anyone surfing but the beach was beautiful. There was a lot of wildflowers – including some statice. I’m loving seeing plants that are either cultivated at home or imported growing wild here.

Statice at Yallingup Beach

We stopped at the lookout for a few photos and then headed further south to the Wardan Aboriginal Centre. It was interesting but not quite what we expected. It seemed to be more of a museum than an interpretive centre so we will have to wait for another trip to have the full experience. Maybe in the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland on our next trip….

Chris at Yallingup Lookout

Our next stop was back at the Bush Shack Brewery – we were going to have nachos for lunch but the salsa had those dreaded words “may contain egg as produced in a plant that processes eggs, nuts and wheat” *sigh* We each settled on a pint of Strawberry Blonde beer and bought a 6-pack to bring back to the condo.

After that we headed to Dunsborough, thinking to do some souvenir shopping but there wasn’t anything to be found. This is a tourist area with a difference!

Today, Friday, we decided to go snorkeling. First we went to a bay where we had seen someone snorkeling on Thursday but there was nothing to see on the bottom of the ocean, not even when we walked through the seaweed to try to stir up some fish. We decided that Meelup Bay should be our next destination. Unfortunately, when we got there, it was quite choppy and we didn’t have anything for floatation. I guess we’re not going to get to snorkel this trip…..

John and I made a quick stop at Happ’s pottery and winery – they have some really interesting wines but we only bought one bottle of Fuschia. I wish we had gone there earlier in our stay as I would have bought a few other of their wines. On our way to the winery, we found a Christmas Tree – nope, not one that you decorate but a form of mistletoe that grows as a tree. It was so pretty.

Christmas Tree

We had left Karen and Les in Dunsborough to look around – when we got back, Karen took me to a rack of clearance clothing and pulled out a pair of Wrangler jean shorts and asked me to guess the price – I figured $25 and just about fell over when she showed me that the regular price was $120 and they were on sale for $50. There were distressed jeans on sale as well and they were equally pricy. Glad I don’t need to buy any clothes!

It was a bit drizzly today – not hard rain and still warm.

Tuesday was a relaxing day – we didn’t do much more than sit by the pool, walk by the ocean and enjoy the weather.

While Les and John were barbecuing the steaks, they saw a possum. They called for Karen and I to come down and see it, but it had disappeared into the trees and all we could see was the movement as it went from branch to branch. Maybe we’ll spot it again.

Today (Wednesday), we went to the Busselton Jetty and Underwater Observatory. The jetty is 1.8 km long and used to be used for freighters but now it is only for recreation. You can fish off the jetty and walk on it even if you are not going to the observatory. We got there just after it opened and took the first “train” out to the end for the tour of the Observatory. It was a beautifully sunny day and the colour of the ocean was fantastic. We had 40 minutes to roam around the underwater observatory and the guide was good at pointing out different fish and telling everyone about the jetty.

After the tour was over and we went outside, we were surprised by how warm it already was at 10 a.m. (it was over 30 Celsius today). We brought a picnic lunch with us and thought we would eat it in the Tuart National Forest as there were 3 separate picnic areas shown on the map. When we got to the first one, there was a sign warning of high mosquito concentrations and also warning of Ross River Virus. I got out to take a photo and was immediately welcomed by a cloud of mozzies (as mosquitos are called here). Back into the car quickly and a change of plans! We’ll go to the beach to eat – well, we got there and it was also inhabited by mosquitos so we stopped for a few photos (John and Les were trying to get a photo of a stingray that was in the shallows but it was camera shy).

While we have been driving around, we have noticed that people here use solar power a lot – houses have large solar panels and even solar hot water tanks.

We headed back to Busselton and found a shaded park beside a small river. We ate our lunch to the sound of chatter from the seagulls and the watching eyes of a Corella (a type of Cockatoo). There were many more Corellas in the tree but they seemed to be looking the other way. After that nice break, we headed back towards the condo to find a grocery store and then back to the condo. Not a long day but tiring….

Oh – the hazelnut liqeur is fantastic over ice cream!

Not sure what is on the agenda for Thursday – maybe a little shopping for souvenirs or a visit to another winery.

Monday started out early – for some reason, none of us slept well during the night so we were all awake fairly early in the morning. John, Les and I decided to walk up the road to see if we could spot the kangaroos that John had seen on Sunday morning.

It wasn’t far before we saw a “herd” of them in a farmer’s field. They were grazing and keeping a wary eye out for anything that might disturb them.

We were all snapping photos when a single kangaroo started towards us – we kept expecting her to veer off but she came fairly close to the fence. We were excited to see that she had a joey in her pouch and didn’t seem to be in a big hurry to move away. She did start moving when the herd of cows which were in the same field came toward her though.

After such a great start to the morning, we decided to drive to Augusta which was on the Southern Ocean. On the way we stopped at a small town called Cowaramup – they have fiberglass cows all over town in various poses. Apparently, the town is known to locals as Cowtown so they decided to go with the theme. I think they should become a sister town to North Cowichan *g* While there, we visited the Margaret River Wine Centre and bought a bottle of wine to try.

Next stop was a small winery outside of Margaret River – The Berry Farm. They make preserves, jams, dressings, vinegars, ciders, fruit wines, sparkling wines, liqueurs and fortifieds. Nearly everything is out for sampling so we tried the jams, dressings and preserves and the fruit wines and liqueurs of course. We bought a bottle ofRaspberry No.2 wine and some Hazelnut Liqueur. It was a beautiful place and we enjoyed the tasting. While we were on our way back to the car, I finally managed to get a photo of a bird I’d been seeing but that didn’t ever seem to stay still long enough for a photo. It’s called a Splendid Fairy Wren.

Isn’t it beautiful?

After that we headed down the Bussell Highway to Augusta, only stopping to take photos and to pick up something for lunch. We found a beach on the Southern Ocean to eat our lunch – now we’ve seen the Indian Ocean (which is the ocean that our condo is located beside) and the Southern Ocean. After lunch and a stretching of our legs, we headed back to the condo via Caves Road. As we were driving along, we suddenly all yelled for John to stop the car – we had seen 3 kangaroos grazing and lazing at the side of the road. John turned the car around and Les and I jumped out to take some photos – we really expected them to run away as soon as we got out of the vehicle but they weren’t too interested in what we were doing. Les got a really good photo as he was this close:

We made it back to the condo at about 6 p.m. – a long day of driving but very enjoyable. We saw a lot of wineries (but didn’t sample at them – just marvelled at the landscaping of a lot of them.)

Tuesday will be a lazy day – time for a little r and r.

Another beautiful day!

We headed out about mid morning for a drive and the first place we ended up was the Busselton Jetty.

This jetty is very long and it has an underwater observatory at the far end. There is a small train that can take you out to the observatory. Since we were there (and had actually found a parking spot), we decided to check it out as it was on our list of places we wanted to see. Since it was Sunday, it was really busy and we were going to have to wait for 2.5 hours to go on the tour. Well, that didn’t seem like a great idea so we decided to come back another day during the week and explore the jetty. There was an open-air market going on just a while away so we wandered through it. They had everything from antiques to Christmas items to knitting to produce. We saw the largest cabbage that we’ve ever seen and it was only $1.50. As much as it broke our hearts to forego such a bargain, we knew we wouldn’t be able to get through it all in the next week and a half *g*

We drove around the outskirts of Busselton and eventually saw the Information Centre. We went in and picked up a few brochures and then decided it was time to try the Chocolate Beer at the Bush Shack Brewery. On the way there we saw kangaroos in a field but couldn’t get a good photo of them – we’ll try again since John had seen them in the same place early this morning.

The Brewery was very busy – looked like it was a favourite place for people to come for a picnic lunch and have a few beer. We decided that we would each get a different type of beer and do a taste test of all of them. I had the Chocolate Beer, John had the Strawberry Blonde Beer, Karen had the Apple Cider and Les had the Twisted Lemon Beer. Our favourite was the Strawberry Blonde, followed by the Twisted Lemon. The cider was nice and the Chocolate beer was interesting – it didn’t taste bad, and you could taste the chocolate but it was not a beer you would want to drink many of at once.

I think we might be heading back there again before we leave this area.

Once we got back to the condo, John and I went to the beach for a walk – unlike yesterday, there was no one else there so it was like our own personal beach *s*

We had to fuel up the car today – gas prices range from $1.44 to $1.49 per litre – guess we shouldn’t complain about our prices anymore!

 

Well, after a very long day of travel (or should that more correctly be days of travel?), we arrived!

On Wednesday, we caught the 10:15 a.m. ferry from Duke Point, then a taxi to the airport. Getting through to the Departures area went fairly smoothly – and the attendant at West Jet even checked our luggage right through to Perth and gave us boarding passes for all our flights. We did learn, however, that once you fill out the US form at the US departure gate, you are considered to be in the US and bringing fruit in (and admitting it) will get you a quick visit to the food inspection desk. Luckily for me, the apple had a US sticker on it so it was good to go (and it didn’t even taste that good *s*). We got to the airport departures lounges just about the time that Karen and Les boarded their plane so we didn’t meet up with them in Vancouver.

It was a good flight to LA – and to our surprise, we didn’t need to claim our luggage to go through customs as we had already done that at Vancouver Airport. You do still need to exit the terminal to get to a different terminal but we had lots of time so it was not a big deal. (BTW – James, we waved at you when we passed over Seattle *s*). We walked around a bit and watched for Karen and Les, but they were flying from a different terminal and we didn’t catch up to them.

Our flight to Brisbane left at 11:50 p.m. Pacific Standard Time and we arrived in Brisbane at about 8 a.m. John and I both got some sleep but I found that trying to watch a movie was frustrating because the headphones didn’t want to stay on my ears so I watched the flight map while knitting. *g* Clearing customs was quick and easy and we rechecked our baggage. When we did that, we were given a new boarding pass for our flight to Perth which allowed us to get on the transit bus to the Domestic Terminal free of charge. Once we got to the domestic terminal, we didn’t want to sit down so we walked around and around. There wasn’t a lot of shops (and we weren’t really in the mood for shopping because we were so tired) but we did lots of looking. Oh – before I forget, Australia’s domestic policy towards liquids, aerosols, and gels is vastly different than Canada and the US. You can carry liquids on board so we took large bottles of water with us. The flight to Perth seemed the longest even though it was only 5 hours long but we were so tired.

We landed at Perth at 2:10 and, as arranged, collected our luggage and headed for the rental car lot to meet Karen and Les. We were a little surprised when we didn’t find them but then thought they might still have been in the terminal waiting for us and we missed them in the crowd. The mass of people had cleared out and we could easily see that Karen and Les were not there so we went to check on the status of their rental car and we told they hadn’t picked it up yet. Ok, time to panic! We knew they only had a short time frame to clear customs and get to their connecting flight so it seemed likely that they had missed the connection. But how to find out? We asked at the Qantas sales desk and they said they weren’t allowed to say anything about passengers. Then we went to the Qantas departures desk and asked if they could help – a very nice lady who was working with the baggage said that their flight from LA was delayed leaving so they probably couldn’t make the connection and would be on the next flight from Melbourne which would arrive at 4 p.m. There was no way of finding out though and it was 3:30 by this time, so we waited by the luggage carousels and hoped that we would see them coming down the hall. Our hopes were realized and we collected their luggage, rented the car (a small red Hyuyndai) and headed out of Perth with John driving.

Driving a right-hand drive vehicle was not quite as nerve-wracking this time (well for me – not sure about John as the driver). We headed out of town, didn’t get lo st but missed one turn because the directions we had were to turn right and an overpass had been built so you actually needed to turn off to the left. Did I mention that it was now rush hour traffic? With some basic maps, we managed to get over to the correct freeway and headed towards Dunsborough. It wasn’t a bad drive but we were all really tired and it seemed to take longer than we thought it would. When we got to Bunbury, we detoured into the town and looked for a grocery store. We found a Coles but it was closed – we all looked at each other and questioned whether it really was Friday night. Yes, it was but the late night opening night was Thursday! There was nothing open so we headed back out on the highway again and decided that we could manage in the morning even without groceries. By this time it was dark out – driving at night in an unfamiliar area in a car with right hand drive is an experience that none of us want to repeat. We finally found the condo and had 30 minutes to spare before the check in desk closed at 9 p.m.

The condo is nice – not quite what we’re used to but it will be comfortable. The bathroom(s) is/are strange – it’s divided into 2 rooms. One has a sink and toilet and the other has a sink and a tub. The second bedroom has 2 twin beds but the staff came and reconfigured them into a king. We have a small fridge, a convection microwave and a stovetop.

We checked in, sat and relaxed for a while and then headed for bed at about 10:30 Perth time. We all slept well and got up between 7 and 10 (and no, John was not the first one up this morning). Once we got up, it was time to check out the hot tub and pool as it had been too dark the night before. We had a nice soak and then came back to get ready to go to Dunsborough (about 15 minutes away) and get groceries. It always takes way longer to get groceries when all 4 of us are buying them! We got lots though and loaded the fridge up.

The rest of today was spent walking on the beach for John and I and sitting by the pool for Karen and Les. Tonight we are barbecuing pork chops for dinner. The weather is beautiful, the beach is wonderful, and the air smells fantastic and we are happy to be back in Aus!

More photos can be found on the sidebar under Australia – Dunsborough.

Hot Tub

Morning visitor at the hot tub