Days 75-76 (16-17 Sep) The Letter B Brought to you by Bunbury & Busselton

Heading into the deep south! There were quick visits to bustling Bunbury and beautiful Busselton – try saying that three times quickly.

Everything in Bunbury seemed suspiciously new and just a tad nouveau riche. Any heritage buildings have been tarted up to cover their embarrassment at being old; dare I say mutton dressed as lamb. A case in the point is the Art Gallery, an old converted Sisters of Mercy convent, now painted a very questionable shade of strawberry pink with white trim. It looks like a giant coconut ice with rust red eyeliner. I know that's a mixed metaphor, but it deserves it. Our favourite gallery moment was watching a local posing his bullmastiff for a portrait on the front steps. Bunbury is well worth a stroll around the streets to view the variety of architecture jostling for attention and the funky street art. The Marlston hill lookout tower is not to be missed for unbeatable views over the McMansions and harbour. The Bunbury tower, dubbed “the milk carton” by locals, can’t be missed, you'll see what I mean.

Busselton was a little more elegant, reveling in its history and advertising museums and pioneering stories at every corner. We weren’t there long, but did fit in a sunset visit to the famous coastal picture spot Sugarloaf Rock, where we met pig farmers from Gippsland - Noel & Adrienne. Adrienne became Dave’s new best pal when she spotted his camera; she is also a Canon aficionado. They talked shop while Noel and I commiserated on being photographer widows.

The next morning we also managed to visit Busselton’s main attraction – the Jetty. It is apparently the longest wooden piered jetty in the southern hemisphere, second in the world to one somewhere in England, which is about 200 metres longer. Busselton’s jetty extends about 1.8 kms out to sea, and ceased operations as a government port in 1973, at which time funding on its maintenance also ceased - scrooges! This was very problematic when Cyclone Alby paid a visit in 1978 and took a rather large chunk away as a souvenir. With Busselton’s favourite son now lying derelict in the gutter, not even eligible for welfare, the locals banded together to form the Busselton Jetty Environment and Conservation Association, the BJECA (more catchy acronym needed, guys). They managed to raise over $3 million by the sweat of their brow, until the WA Government eventually took pity on them and coughed up an additional $24 million for the restoration project. It is now a tourism juggernaut, offering everything from the Underwater Observatory (take a staircase 8 metres underwater in a cylindrical reverse fishbowl experience), to “Fishing Clinics” to “Mermaid Tours” (I don’t know, don’t ask).

We took the little train out to the end, did the Underwater Observatory experience, and bumped into Noel and Adrienne again. We discovered baby seagulls in nests along the jetty edge (you’ll never guess what they look like), and then bumped into Paul & Lou again – the Canberra couple we last chatted to in Monkey Mia. They are also doing the Term 3 travel thing from Canberra around the West, and are due home the same time as us. We greeted each other like old friends and discovered that while we were braving the cold in Perth, they had popped over to Bali for a week! It is a WA thing to do, as flights from Perth to Bali are about $150. Why didn’t we think of this? Sadly, we don’t have our passports on us.

Anyway, we did enjoy our time at the Busselton Jetty, but if I hear the term “Interpretive Centre” one more time, so help me…

Health wise, we’ve been afflicted with a touch of Shakespearean tragedy. Dave’s one infected toe has become three, and he now hath a Macbethian plea:

Canst thou not minister to a toe diseased,

Pluck from the skin a rooted infection,

Raze out the wretched troubles of the itch

And with some sweet effective antibiotic

Cleanse the swollen foot of that perilous staph?

Meanwhile, a month after falling down Mt Bruce, I’m performing my own rendition of Lady Macbeth: 

Out, damned spike! out, I say! …

Yet who would have thought the old hand

to have had so much spinifex in it. 

Convent cum Art Gallery (Dave)

Because something in every WA city is named after Lord John Forrest (Liz)

Street corner, Bunbury (Liz)

Because every Bull-mastiff wants to be pretty in pink (Liz)

Funky Street Art, Bunbury (Liz)

Bunbury Theatre (Dave)

Marlston Hill Lookout (Dave)

McMansions view from Marlston Hill (Dave)

Not established 1908? (Dave)

Bunbury Tower AKA The Milk Carton (Dave)

Busselton Boat (Dave)

Sugarloaf Rock (Dave)

The Jetty by night (Dave)

Heading underwater at the Observatory (Dave)

Jetty train (Dave)

Apparently everything around us needs interpreting these days. (Dave)

Baby seagulls! (Liz)

Days 72-74 (13-15 Sep) Tales & Legends of Rockingham

We spent four days in Rocky, and found it a picturesque place of fascinating history, intrigue and hidden treasure. Maybe literally. Legend has it there is a hoard of gold hidden somewhere here; one now long deceased Harry McCoy allegedly said there was enough gold buried in East Rockingham to drive a man mad and that it would be found under a circle of stones. Given the number of ships wrecked or plundered on this section of coastline, it is just possible. Perhaps this is why our caravan park neighbour was trying out a new metal detector on site. Then again, perhaps he was just searching for lost tent pegs. 

We took a tour of HMAS Stirling, Australia’s largest Naval base, because, well, I know a guy who knows a guy. Located on an island of pristine beaches, awesome military boats, forests and fields of arum lilies, inhabited by tammars (and tiger snakes), this is a great place to visit. Except that, you can’t very easily. Sorry about that, but, it’s who you know.

A photographic highlight around Rockingham was the old abandoned power station. Sitting on prime ocean frontage real estate, this monolithic structure is the grunge version of Pride & Prejudice’s Pemberley. A developer’s dream, if it weren’t for the asbestos. In the meantime, it remains a photographer’s and graffiti artist’s dream, and a security nightmare due to safety issues. Asbestos notwithstanding, it is stories high and riddled with holes; a photographer fell to his death there just a few months ago. The staircases have since been removed and additional fencing erected, but it remains alluring to all who see it. We dutifully remained safely outside the fenceline.

Wandering along the beach one afternoon we heard screams in the sky above us, and lo and behold, when we looked up, it was raining men. And a woman – she was the one screaming. For just a few hundred dollars, you too can have the privilege of leaping out of a plane 14,000 feet up, 60 seconds of freefall all inclusive. We watched the skydive beach landings, and the guy who had the job of guarding the beaching landing zone – marked with orange safety cones – to keep it clear of pedestrians. His main but futile task seemed to be preventing passing dogs from peeing on said cones.

We paid a visit to Rockingham Central - a large shopping mall - and got hopelessly lost, wandering in circles with our trolley of groceries trying to find the correct carpark exit, due in no small part to the fact that the “you are here” maps were installed back-to-front. We were, however, impressed with the high tech trolleys that lock the wheels at the carpark perimeter to prevent them going walkies farther afield.

There was again much coffee drinking, wining and dining, meeting up with work and photography mates of Dave, and dinner with other old friends (and new best friends!).  A wildlife cruise was on the agenda around Seal Island (actually inhabited by sea lions), Penguin Island (closed for breeding season) and Bird Island. We were most fortunate to have a pod of dolphins spot us and come to play around the boat for a while. Due to lingering too long over one of the aforementioned coffee dates, we nearly didn’t make the cruise, having to phone ahead to advise we were still coming – please hold the boat! Yes, we were THOSE people, rocking up to board at the last moment when all other passengers are pre-loaded and waiting. We just tried to stave off the accusatory stares of our fellow passengers by feigning celebrity status. I suspect we failed.

Lastly, I have just a few things to get off my chest in regards to the caravan bumper saga, which now has a few new episodes. The caravan was booked  - a month in advance - for a service and bumper replacement in Perth. Somehow they still did not have the correct bumper in stock. However, they did remove the old bumper; is this progress? 

Dave duly decided to book the van into our local dealer back home; hey, we’ve already travelled half the country without an effective bumper. He decisively phoned the Canberra Office and set a date for late October. The next day, we received a quizzical call from the dealer, informing us their records indicate they already replaced our bumper on 7 July. Since we left town on 4 July, the circumstantial evidence was fairly strong that they had not. And even if they had, it still fell off, and therefore a replacement was still our due. Well, then, they’d need the old bumper surrendered. Fine, guys, but take it up with the dealer in Perth, who just removed it. If you want to freight a broken bumper across the country, be our guest, but we ain’t driving back there to strap it onto our van with rope again. 

In the meantime, we still have a caravan spare tyre bouncing around with nowhere to bolt it, which is just a little inconvenient. Dave has suggested some monikers for our caravan – the “HMAS Bumperless” or “Spare me”.

The Grunge Pemberley (Dave)

Inexplicably epitaphed "I went to the gym today, tell everyone"

More angles on the poor old power station (Liz)

Rockingham Waterfront (Dave)

Dolphins joining the Wildlife Cruise (Dave)

Wildlife Cruise (Dave)

Sea lions at the ill-named Seal Island (Dave)

Sunset over the Kwinana Grain Terminal (Dave)

Heart of industry (Dave)

Kwinana Grain Terminal by night (Dave)

More industry by night (Dave)

Skydivers coming in to land (Dave)

Wild Geese - commemorating Irish political prisoners' escape to America

Port Coogee (Dave)

Sunset (Dave)

Commemoration of the tragedy of C Y O'Connor, who shot himself while riding his horse into the water

Rockingham Waterfront by night (Dave)

White linen for a grasshopper (Liz)

Forest of Arum Lilies (Liz)

Lily Hunting (Dave)

Days 64-71 (5-12 Sep) Really & Virtually in Perth

We have arrived! Perth is to WA what New York is to the USA. I think. At least, it makes me want to sing “New York, New Yooork!” and then I remember that’s a whole other country. But it certainly sets new benchmarks for a civilised city here in Australia, with dedicated drive-thru coffee bars (Zarraffa’s)! It also has franchise food chains I’ve never heard of – eg. Dome. Similar to McDonald’s but with breakfast menu items such as Eggs Benedict. I like this place.

Having cousins in high places, we got to stay in the exclusive suburb of The Vines up north for a few days, where the large acreage homes are surrounded by vineyards, and lots of little establishments that sell only wine, or cheese, or chocolate, or organic strawberries. The streets are named things like Bordeaux Lane, Chateau Place, Chardonnay Drive, Sauvignon Ave, Champagne Terrace, etc. From there we had to follow the foodie trail down to the lower plains of Perth. We may have detoured in to cheese and chocolate places for taste testing and subsequent spontaneous splurging. We may also have gradually growing girths.

While The Vines was an exquisite place to stay, we were looking for somewhere a little closer to the city for the latter part of the week. The van park closest to the city had the following Google Review: “This Caravan park is the lowest, filthiest caravan park I have ever seen in Australia....When our family stayed at this place for four days back in 2012 we were under siege by the cops trying to arrest an armed meth dealer that had a separate caravan as its lab...”. There were other reviews, but none as positive as this. As adventurous as it sounded, we decided to sacrifice more exciting blog fodder in favour of a more reputable van park slightly further out. We scored lovely neighbours, Martin and Faye from Melbourne.

Thursday we headed into town, stoked to discover that a bus from directly outside our caravan park went directly into the city centre. We trotted through the famous King’s Park, enjoying the plant species collection from every part of WA, many currently in blossom. Seeds from every species are collected for growing in the park, and freeze dried for a seed bank here in WA, and a seed bank in London (just in case London or Perth is destroyed in some future cataclysmic event). In July 2008 there was even a 750 year old boab tree uprooted from the Kimberley and transferred by truck 3,200 kilometres south to the Park, no small feat at 36 tonnes, 14 metres high and eight metres wide (branch span; the trunk measured 2.5 metres in diameter). A new bridge had to be built on a section of the highway to enable the tree to make its journey. It is still in recovery, but seems to be making progress (the tree, not the bridge. I don’t know how the bridge fared).

Next it was time for a photo op in the Park with the statue of great great (great?) uncle Johnny (Sir John Forrest, explorer, politician and Australia’s first Baron). He is ageing well.

On Friday we visited Freo (Fremantle). First stop was the Visitor’s Centre for maps, etc, which I obtained while Dave wandered off. I loitered around the town square searching for a glimpse of my errant husband, when a guy sitting at an outdoor café nearby called out “Oi, he went THAT way!”. Either we both really looked like tourists, or even strangers know we were meant to be together.

Freo was an amazing, trendy, happening place, but we started out there very confused. Dave wanted to revisit the “old jail” he had seen on two previous trips, and I duly directed him to the Fremantle Prison, a famous and amazing historic complex that sits above the city with high stone walls and is hard to miss. But Dave insisted this was not the old jail, which he remembered looking over water. And he’d never seen this tourist attraction called the Fremantle Prison (although it had been built in 1851). Our confusion cleared considerably when we discovered The Round House on the sea front – a single, small building which was built in 1830 and initially used as a jail. Suddenly it all makes sense - I’m the Time Traveller’s Wife.

Saturday I managed to get in a visit to Perth’s Art Gallery (excellent) while Dave meandered around parks and foreshores taking pictures of seascapes, landscapes, squirrels … wait, what? We don’t have squirrels in Australia. Except in the zoo. And except for those who have escaped from the zoo…  if Australia has feral squirrels overrunning the place in a few years, remember that it all started here.

Lots of interesting and exciting things happened in Perth. We had a busy social calendar, meeting up with cousins and their spouses and children and a variety of other friends for dinner engagements. A highlight for Dave was being given a test drive of the new Canon 5D Mark IV camera in the city, released only the day before. We got up close and personal with two wedding stretch limos whose doors opened upwards (like the Delorean in Back to the Future). Dave went out for a photo shoot and came back with a new friend/kindred spirit of the photography kind (a reptile breeder who specialises in underwater photography - Hi, Shane!).

We discovered that King’s Park had been under siege a week before by Pokémon players, which was not appreciated by the gardeners. Our last night in Perth we heard that a guy fell in the lake at 1.30am trying to catch a Pokémon from a jetty, and had to be rescued by the police (real police, not virtual police). If you don’t understand all this – don’t worry, neither do we. It has something to do with the virtual world merging with the real world, a bit like that movie Enchanted, except that you get sucked through the porthole of your smartphone, and cartoon creatures that look like squirrels are running around … wait, what? Yes, you read that correctly, there are now both real and virtual squirrels on the loose in Perth. I know, right?! 

Last but not least, we became a bit obsessed with watching car number plates. Because they are a THING over here. WAussies love their personalised plates, which usually manage to incorporate bad spelling and grammar. Just a few that we’ve seen: 4ME2NJOY,  WITCH 1,  MYNZ BETA,  EX-NAVY,  BOUGHT A (on a Jeep), HELLUSIN8. If you work out what that last one means, drop us a line (yes, we have the answer).

Perth by Night (Dave)

Perth by Night 2 (Dave)

Great Uncle Johnny in King's Park (Dave)

Boab in Rehab, King's Park (Liz)

Perth Taxi! (Dave)

Elizabeth Quay Footbridge (Dave)

Really cool tree, Russell Square (Dave)

Squirrel. Real. As in not virtual. (Dave)

Because windmills are also on the loose in Perth, having escaped from Holland some years back. (Dave)

Lesmurdie Falls (Dave)

Fremantle Prison (the newer one) (Dave)

The Round House AKA the Fremantle Jail (the old one) (Dave)

Boats at Fremantle (Dave)

Fremantle Wharf (Dave)

Perth City (Dave)

Perth City

Perth City (Dave)