I have had a great and relaxing time in Busselton. I got to see a lot of the Busselton metropolitan area (it feels so weird saying that!), made a friend or two and did a good job in getting lots of exercise and eating home-cooked local food. Scrambled free-range eggs rock, especially with a chopped-up tomato cooked into them!
Anyway, my entry went AWOL, so I'm rewriting it here in Pemberton. (Correction: silly me, I forgot one had to republish :))
Saturday 16th (Day 2)Weather improved by the time I finished the last entry, so I walked to East Busselton and the new Port Geographe development - Busselton's outer extremities. After basically determining that it looks just like Mindarie, I opted for a change of scenery and walked along a 4WD track along the still-somewhat-wild Vasse Estuary, where I saw a fantastic sunset. I spent most of the rest of the night chatting with my friend Stuart by phone and chilling with other backpackers back at the hostel.
Sunday 17th (Day 3)Beautiful fine day - total contrast to the last couple! Woke up late, but managed to cook most of my food for later consumption, before doing some shopping (btw Daniel, this place has a book exchange!) and taking advantage of the unexpectedly beautiful weather to head off to Broadwater, the sprawling western suburb which contains most of Busselton's holiday parks and best beaches. From the city, it was a 1.5 hour walk to a small point jutting into the ocean which I wanted to take sunset photos from (near Barnard Street, for future reference). It is a hike from the city I'd only recommend for very fit people or those with a car or bike, though. But it is honestly worth it. After that, I came back along the highway, and was initially lost because the bit I came out on looked awfully "country".
Monday 18th (Day 4)Probably the most relaxed day so far on my itinerary. Decided to check out Busselton's public transport system, still in its infancy, with buses at 9am, 1pm and 5pm every day except Tuesdays which does a figure-of-eight route that covers first East and then West Busselton, and costs $5.20 for the whole trip. While I'd walked large sections of it, the route wandered into suburban areas I hadn't been to, and the driver knew a lot about the development of modern Busselton and the surrounding area. The bus is just like the modern Transperth ones you see on some northern suburbs routes - it's longer than the Circleroute buses, and has more seats, but ample room for walking frames and prams to be stored - as I found out later in the route, there was a reason for this :)
One thing I've always enjoyed doing as well is seeing how and where people live in different places. In Busselton, there's now an even mix of suburbs mimicking various Perth housing estates such as Mindarie, Currambine and Leeming to different extents, and charming old streets with no kerbs and an abundance of old style houses with eaves.
I'm starting to conclude Busselton has an extreme version of a problem I've seen elsewhere - everyone is either very old or very young. You see groups of young teenagers, but rarely people over about 16 or 17, and many old people, and a few young families, but that's it. The busdriver believed this was due to the sudden increase in Busselton's population (~9,000 in 1993 to ~20,000 today) and jobs and rental properties not being able to meet this increased pressure. The owner of the backpacker hostel believes that Busselton's council designs everything with seniors in mind, often ignoring the needs of younger people.
The fact Busselton was so recently just a small town was especially hard to believe after my return to Busselton, where I had to compete with peak lunch traffic in Queen and Albert Street, which was just nasty.
At some point I decided to find out about Dunsborough, and found to my surprise that TransWA does a return concession ticket for just $5.80. So I went there for a few hours - the beaches there are stunning, and the forest is literally just out the back. Dunsborough has all the young people Busselton seemed to be missing, and is a lively surf town not dissimilar to Torquay (Victoria) and some of the Hawaii surf towns I saw, with surf brand names *everywhere*. With a local butcher, baker and seafood wholesaler, people there don't live too badly! :D
Came back to Busselton to photograph the sunset from Busselton's main canal where it meets the ocean. Again, stunning, this time made rather unusual by the smoke from a fire on Cape Naturaliste - the flames of which could be seen clearly after dark.
I spent the rest of the night concluding that one cannot buy a chocolate bar in Busselton, or in fact ANYTHING, after 10pm on a Monday night - so much for 24-hour service stations! - and chilling with other backpackers.
Tuesday 19th (Day 5)First priority was to cook my remaining food - my Busselton free range eggs worked well as scrambled eggs with Roma tomatoes and Dunsborough veal steaks :D The priority this morning was to go up Busselton Jetty - the longest in the Southern Hemisphere at 1841m long - and see the Busselton Underwater Observatory ($15 for adult including jetty admission). One thing they don't tell you is that the walk will take longer due to having to dodge careless people with fishing rods waving around, and family groups taking up the entire width of the jetty that you have to push past and apologise. But the last 600m was better than the rest. The Jetty has had its fair share of disasters - the first section was destroyed by Cyclone Alby in 1978, then the end bits were affected by a fire in 1999 (probably arson) and a storm in 2004. The UWO was awesome :D Got to see all manner of fish in quantity 8m under the ocean - we got a guided tour and then were left to take our own photos.
I had intended to go to Margaret River for a few hours, but sadly took longer to get back from the Jetty, and missed it. However, it was a fine day and I wasn't going to waste it, so after going to the Net cafe and uploading some
pictures and catching up on the real world, I walked around the beach and town centre for a while, said my goodbyes to the backpackers, and got my bus to Pemberton via Augusta.
Unfortunately, my camera chose this moment to run out of batteries, so I have no shots of the pink, smoke-filled sky and yellow sun among the forests in a tremendous sunset between Yallingup and Margaret River. We watched 'Scooby-Doo' from Augusta to Pemberton as it was now dark and, although the headlight-lit forest along the road was beautiful, it was too hard to see :D
Pemberton YHA so far seems to be a professional and well-run establishment with friendly staff. I have no regrets so far about basing my next four days here before my return to Perth.
