Margaret River

Today was our first day of our drive around the south part of Western Australia.  We left Perth this morning about 9:00 AM and had a leisurely drive to Margarets Beach Resort.  It is located on the coast just west of the town of Margaret River.  The drive was nice although we did have rain off and on most of the day. 

Our first stop was at Busselton to look at the Busselton Jetty.  The jetty is about 2 kilometers long and is the longest jetty in the Southern Hemisphere.  We were planning on going to the end of the jetty where there is a place to view the fish and other sea creatures.  However, the underwater visibility was poor and the viewing area was closed.  Plus there were rain showers that were moving through so we stayed closer to shelter.

The jetty was built some years ago because Busselton was a shipping port for the area.  Over the years the jetty was enlarged to its current size.  However, shipping has now moved to better ports, so the jetty is a local tourist attraction.

 

To get to the end you can either walk or take the small train that runs the length of the jetty.

Notice the rubber tires on the engine.  Rather than turning the entire train around, using the tires, the engine can uncouple, drive off-rail to the other end of the cars and recouple. 

This bronze statue was next to the jetty.  Like I mentioned yesterday, you never know where public art is going to show up.

From Busselton we drove to the Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse.  Built in 1903, this is still an active lighthouse and marks the headlands to Geographe Bay.

 

From this point, because of the way the point of land lays, it is possible to watch the sunrise over the water from a west coast.  The lighthouse is only 40 meters tall (~120 feet), but sits 100 meters above sea level.  The light is viewable from 25 miles out to sea.

From the lean of the trees, it is easy to tell the prevailing wind is from the Southwest.

The Margaret River area is a major wine producing part of Western Australia.  We stopped at Vasse Felix winery.  The grounds were lovely.  While there we saw an interesting bush called the Ivory Curl Tree.

 

Of course there were grape vines everywhere.

And birds on the grounds.

From there we headed to our stop for the night, Margarets Beach Resort.

On the menu this evening was, Porterhouse steak, Fish (Hake) and Chips, and pasta with  Pork Shoulder.

Tomorrow we are going to explore the Margaret River area.  Hopefully the rain will move out and we will have some blue skies to show.