The red arrow is Wellington Dam. We drove down the highway to Busselton and came back the more leisurely route through the Ferguson Valley and into the national park from the south.
The roof top bag was ready and waiting for us at ARB. While we were in the car park, we decided to ring the Broome 12 volt specialist where we bought the battery charger. Glen didn’t think that the battery charger was working properly as it seemed to fail to recharge Dave’s battery. They told us to take it to the local ARB store. We were pretty happy to have made that phone call before we left the car park. We left the battery charger with them to test while we had a look around town.
This sign was in a public garden in the main shopping precinct. We were about a good kilometre from the beach. I meant to ask the information centre about the sign and forgot, but will ask when we go back there again.
Busselton is a great town. The old and new are blended beautifully and it all fits together to make it very interesting. Lovely parks and gardens and lot of varied shops and the main franchises don’t dominate the area. Close to walk to everything once you have parked, even the beach. Busselton is on Geographe Bay, which you will see abbreviated as Geo.
A short walk from the town centre is the beach and the famous Busselton Jetty. The sand is very white and the water is very blue and very clear. This would be a top spot to live.
The foreshore park and the swimming enclosure. As we all know, that is something you need with WA with the high number of recent shark attacks.
There is a under water observatory and a train line on the jetty. The building also houses a gift shop with some spectacular glass work. I saw the best glass shark ever and the paper weights with jelly fish inside were also excellent. There was also a very large glass conch style seashell with beautiful brown and gold tones. I was amazed at the pricing as it was very reasonable for such a high standard of workmanship.
The train was expensive at $12 adult and I don’t agree with charging to access a public jetty.
Inside the gift shop, there is also a jetty museum depicting samples of the jetty timber and some of it’s history. This was free entry.
Someone has made this stick Christmas Tree. Very cleverly put together. The gift centre was using it for a sales display. I liked the way it had been made.
The information centre, I think the lighthouse is a replica, as we passed a site further off the beach which marked the original lighthouse. The water was so clear that light was reflecting through it.
Having the cheese and with the warm weather, we headed back to the car to refrigerate the cheese and then head back to ARB to see what results they got with the charger. They said that it appears to be okay and working.
Time for Lunch:
What could be better, the car in the shade, a table in the shade and beside the river with a view. We are definitely getting better at this. We have found that most park picnic tables are in full sun – wondering when the cancer council will finally make councils provide shade or put umbrella holes back in the tables.
The oldest stone church in WA.
The vicarage, I guess someone has to live there. What a wonderful house.
We are now heading home an alternate route, up through the Ferguson Valley.
Wellington Mills was a very large town and at one stage had 800 people living there. It gradually declined and most people moved on. The town was destroyed in 1950 when a large bush fire came through, so I guess it was good that it had been abandoned and there wasn’t loss of life in that case.
In 1917 they had 117 children in two schools, so it was a thriving centre.
We were close to Gnomesville but it was never on our list. We turned off to the King Jarrah – yes another one. The tallest tree in each Jarrah forest is called this name. It was no where as impressive as the one at Lane Poole and we were there at the wrong time of day for a photo.
Take a drive with us through the Jarrah forest.
It was a nice forest drive back to our camp.
I just love Busselton and all the seaside towns on the Geographe Bay!
ReplyDelete