A Rooney in Singapore: Western Australia-- Day 4

Busselton Jetty Day.

Today we woke up to another day of beautiful weather. Sunny, cool to start and warm by noon. We ate our breakfast and drove up to the town of Busselton.

Busselton is around 30 minutes north of Bunker Bay. It sits on Geographe Bay:

named in 1801 by French Explorer Nicolas Baudin; Baudin named the bay after his ship, Geographe. The bay is a wide curve of coastline extending from Cape Naturaliste past the towns of Dunsborough and Busselton, ending near the city of Bunbury. The bay is protected from the rough seas of the Indian Ocean by Cape Naturalist, which makes it a popular destination for recreational boaters. The bay is extremely shallow, limiting the entrance of large ships. To alleviate the problem, the two-kilometre-long Busselton Jetty, the longest in the southern hemisphere, was built.

We arrived right at opening time to get tickets for the first tour of the underwater observatory. The observatory is located at the end of the jetty. Good thing we wore good walking shoes!

The Busselton Jetty

We trekked out on the jetty, which is over a mile long and only in just "okay" shape. It is a wooden structure that was pretty narrow to start. No rails on the side, either. We watched John closely so we didn't have a repeat of Koi Boy. He had already fallen out of a tree and into the Margaret river two days prior on our canoe trip.

I failed to mention that, didn't I?

Here we are along the way. About 3/4 along, as you can imagine, John decided he'd had enough. It was too long, too hot, and too boring. The water was clear, but no fish. The kids took to calling out, "look at the invisible fish!"

Yes, we walked all the way to the end out there.

The end consists of a small shack, which is the location of the underwater observatory. We waited until start time, gave the gal our tickets, and were escorted with another group of jetty-trekkers down the stairs to the ocean floor. The lower level had 4 large glass window panes that you look out to see whatever happens to be there.

Here are some of the fish sites:

The colors we very pretty and we did see fish. Nothing big or exciting. Sharks don't come into Geographe Bay (too cold!) and there weren't any rays or jelly fish or anything else. My overall impression of this morning's adventure is: it was nice to see, but pricey and I don't think I'd put it on a "must do" list.

After our viewing, we began the long walk back to shore. There's no food or further fun at the end of the jetty. Just the viewing observatory.

Anyway, we ran into our friends, the Sauers (remember the canoe trip), on the walk back. They were walking out! We had a good chat and decided to try and hit the Aboriginal place in the afternoon together and do dinner that night.

By the time we got to shore, it was lunch time and we were hungry. Jim decided it was time to find a winery to visit because we were on day 4 and still hadn't had any wine! We broke out the maps and drove around until we found Will's Domain.

Aaaaaaah... lovely.

We grabbed a table outside and ordered food and drinks and enjoyed a nice leisurely lunch. Even John was well behaved enjoying what he loves best:

Satiated, we touched base again with Kevin and Melina and made our way to the Aboriginal place for the kids to throw boomerangs and spears. Good family fun with boys. Too bad they never got their act together! The spear/boomerang experience was not available and we were told to come back tomorrow morning. (which we did, and the guy wasn't there to do it. After that we gave up on them.)

We gathered the kids and took them back to our place at Bunker Bay where they played in the sand and went swimming. Melina and I headed to the grocery (a real grocery store!) to pick up a few things and then we had fun grilling and grubbing and hanging out: