Wednesday 1st January, 2025
It was hot on Wednesday. We arrived in Bussleton at about 2.30 p.m., going straight to the dump point and filling up with water. We then went to the Busselton Jetty and had a cold drink.
We had planned to stay at the Quindalup Boat Ramp for the night. We did this a year ago and were able to be tucked away out of sight of the actual boat ramp in the large overflow carpark. This time, however, there were signs saying no camping. We had our evening meal and tried to work out where we should go. Eventually we ended up staying overnight near a nature reserve. We arrived after dark.
Thursday 2nd January, 2025
In the morning we got up, packed up, and went down to Meelup Beach. This was lovely. Whilst Stephen had a wash I had a short swim. We stayed until about 3.30 p.m. It got very busy, but had the plus of toilets, plus the Simmos Icecream and coffee van was there.
We thought we wouldn’t keep playing the ‘find somewhere after dark’ lottery and phoned a couple of caravan parks. We got one night at Amblin (now a Discovery Park) and three nights at Southern Stars Caravan Park, but with a different campsite for each night.
Our first night cost $100, but we enjoyed being able to walk through the park to the beach and have an evening swim. We also took the binoculars, our chairs and the tripod down to the beach after dark. There were kids on skateboards and a bright light near the place we had planned to set up. After a while we walked on to a darker spot. We had to keep our torches on when walking as there were people on bikes and skateboards going along the dark path.
Friday 3rd January, 2025
In the morning we went for shopping in the newish Vasse shopping centre. Stephen was shown how to use a bread slicer as it is self serve, but if everyone needs to be shown, it defeats the purpose. There is a beautiful Korean restaurant there, so we mentally picked it for our lunch. We went to Macdonalds to fill in time, but found a very nice café we should have gone to on our way to the restaurant. It was a lovely meal, helped by the atmosphere.
Then we went to the caravan park. We really liked our ‘pitch’ and enjoyed a wine tasting and bought a pizza from the food truck for tea. There was no power, but it was such a nice spot we would like to have stayed, but couldn’t.
We got out the Seestar for a while, not long enough to get a good image, but it’s still nice to play with it.
Saturday 4th January, 2025
Stephen was meeting his friend Richard for coffee in the morning, so I dropped him off and drove off to the beach to wait for him. When I got back we found a spot near the café and had lunch. We spent a couple of hours in the café, having afternoon tea.
Then we went for a little walk and spent time paddling and watching the sea birds.
Then back to the caravan park to our new pitch. It wasn’t as nice as the first pitch, but still had a view across fields. We got out the SeeStar again, but didn’t get much in the way of images, partly because of the caravan park lighting and we also started a bit early.
Sunday 5th January, 2025
We had to move pitches again, and they wouldn’t let us stay on our pitch after 10.00 or go to our new one until 12:00 p.m., as they wanted to mow and water it. That could have been done on Monday morning, one day later. I would have treated us as being a three day stay myself, not moving us on at 10.00 and having a gap of a couple of hours.
Anyway, we went down to Margaret River to the White Elephant café on the beach. We had a very healthy lunch of Thai chicken and salad for lunch. We hung around afterwards and had afternoon tea at about 2.00 p.m.
Then back to the Busselton Jetty for a swim, then an icecream, then we walked half way along the jetty.
Then back to the caravan park where we were in time to have a serve of fish and chips between us with our own salads. We were too tired to get the Seestar out after dark. I went to bed at about 9.30 p.m.
Monday 7th January, 2025
We woke up to a beautiful, sunny morning. It was cool enough overnight for us to sleep comfortably even though the forecast was for a fairly hot day, even in Busselton.
Driving home, I wanted to take the inland route, but this is not possible for quite a while due to the new bypass system. However, we called in at the Capel Bakery for lunch. The rest of the drive home was tiring for me, I expect it was a bad idea to do so much driving the day before we left. But, we arrived home safely, which is all that really matters.