Busselton 6 – 8 December 2006

The day invited us to get out and about early though with the cold start mornings we have been struggling to get up - it is surprising how cool it is at night. The jetty at Busselton is the main feature in the landscape and is nearly 2km long. We walked out and back enjoying the panorama as if on a boat. The water colours are very enticing with that wonderful aquamarine contrasting with the white shallow sands. The jetty is controversial at the moment as it is deteriorating rapidly and needs $22 million to restore. Well be blowed! The state government has offered to buy the entire foreshore (ie 4 – 5 parks) for housing development and give them $6 million towards it! Give up the foreshore for the jetty. It is crazy! It is like all old jetties! It’s dying and sadly it has to go!
Of course we had to bump into Moema and Alamo again: sitting at the café at the jetty! They had been here for the Ironman, gone back to Bunbury and just arrived back! They look so good and FIT! They are still on the road to Kalgoorlie after Albany and Esperance; however we will not see them again on the road as we are on different timetables now. They did this Ironman last year - oh to be that alive! More cold and windy day as we headed west towards Cape Naturaliste. At the end of the cape there is an interesting working lighthouse that we were able to visit and it was so well built that the only change they have made is to switch to electricity from whale oil. The original and most beautiful lenses are still in place. It is worth about $5million and was made in England in 1900. The romance of a lighthouse and the lives around it came to life there! The keeper had two assistants and they had constant 4 hour shifts day and night to wind up the pullies every 45 mins, like a clock, to maintain the rotation. Every half hour they had to go down stairs to refill the oil! There were three solid stone houses there for them and they all had lots of children. It would be a wild place, though back a bit on the hill in the low shrubbery.

We then moved on to the nearby limestone Ngligi Cave. The cave had two main chambers that opened up to cavernous cathedrals with stalactites dripping from the ceiling. We were the last tour through the cave as they were having a wedding in the afternoon – we could just image the grandeur of the ceremony, although we weren’t sure about the wisdom of using the massive amps we saw them dragging in – hope they all had ear plugs! Drove down to Gracetown, an attractive village surrounded by national park, with the ubiquitous housing estates creeping into the bush – the expansion going on along the coast makes Queensland developers look benign. This was the scene of a terrible tragedy in 1999 when 9 people lost their lives when a sand bank collapsed on them. It was marked by some very sensitive poetry about living your life fully with joy for we do not know what is in front of us. It also happens to be and exceptionally peaceful bay with wild headlands of pounding breakers and lots of young people coming to surf.