South Western Australia

The road from Fremantle runs through lots of coastal towns Mandurah, Bunbury, Busselton and Dunsborough. There is a jetty at Busselton which is the longest in the Southern hemisphere at 1.8 Km and it was a very pleasant walk to the end and back. The water along the way was crystal clear but was devoid of any visible fish so it was a good job that I didn’t take my fishing gear.
All of these towns have very good beaches and facilities with lots of walking trails and picnic areas with free electric BBQs.

We stayed three nights in Bunbury which has a dolphin discovery centre where you can swim with the dolphins but they charge an extortionate fee for doing so.

On to Margaret River where we went on a wine tour again with added extras like the Paul Rigby gallery. He was a famous cartoonist who worked all over the world and spent five years in the UK working for the Sun and News of the World. He was especially known for hiding a boy and a dog in his cartoons and I’m sure you avid Sun readers will remember these. This turned out to be the highlight of the tour, even eclipsing lunch at the Brewery. His wife showed us around his studio and works which is left exactly how it was when he died in 2006. We did buy a poster that is full of OZ sayings about all subjects including a reference to Sheila being an old broiler. There is a rude OZ/Irish expression of ‘Whale Oil beef hooked’ which was ironic as there was an Irish couple on the tour.
The four wineries were very good and one wine which we will be bringing back to the UK was a chilli infused Rose called ‘Lost the Plot’.
The area is surrounded by forest where trees like Jarrah, and Karri grow, one other was a Peppermint Tree and when you crushed the leaves in your hands a mixture of Peppermint and Eucalypt was released, this was useful to keep the flies away if you rubbed it onto the skin.

On the way to Augusta there is a beautiful area called Hamelin Bay with superb deserted beaches and marine life.
Augusta itself is quite small but has lots of places to visit including the Leeuwin Lighthouse on the southernmost point of Western Australia where the Southern and Indian Oceans meet it was quite interesting to tour the grounds and read the history of the place.
Pemberton is a forest town with a large sawmill which processes hard woods for the UK and USA. We took a four hour river cruise down the Donnelly River and when we reached the Ocean we expected the river to flow into it but it stopped at a sandbar which separated river from ocean. It only breaks through every 9 months and the river drops 1.5 mtrs overnight.
We stayed at a forest retreat, very quiet and peaceful, lots of Kangaroos and Kookaburras who were very noisy as the sun went down.

On the way from Pemberton to Albany we called in to William’s Bay and there is a site called Elephant Rocks and you can understand why if you look at the attached photo. There was only one way in and out through large rocks, I managed to make it through but Sheila was caught by a rogue wave which flooded the gap and left her with very wet trousers. The next incident was on the way back to the Car Park when we came across a large snake about 2 mtrs long on the path, I later identified it as a Dugite snake, highly venomous, needless to say Sheila was frozen to the spot terrified. I managed to get a photo and the camera was not on zoom.

Albany lies in the South East of WA and is the place that was first settled and has a long history of Whaling, there are lots of nature walks around the surrounding area and we managed quite a few of them. There was nearly a repeat snake encounter on one of the paths but it turned out to be a King Skink’s tail disappearing into the undergrowth.
Friday we take a plane from Perth to Tasmania.