Week 19 – Busselton – Yallingup – Prevelly (Margaret River)

The drive from Perth to Busselton was a good one as most of the way was a 4 lane highway. The weather is still raining on and off and we headed into the wind the entire way. We poked around Busselton and did some shopping. Busselton has the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere as the bay is very shallow. The jetty was built in the late 1800s to take sheep and timber from Busselton to market in Perth. It was extended a number of times due to larger ships. It was almost destroyed by a cyclone and then a fire but is now a tourist drawcard.

There is a small train which carries passengers to the end of the 1.84km jetty. We rode the train out to the end of the jetty. As you can see it was freezing cold and windy. We then walked the 1.84km back.

Pa took the Pathy in for a new set of tyres as the weather is pretty bad and the tyres have done over 80000km. The tyre place owner said the old tyres probably still had another 10000 in them but we want to be safe with towing the caravan. Good old Cooper Tyres!

Today was the last day of winter, let’s hope the weather improves with spring.

As we left Busselton the next day the sun was shining brightly.

We only travelled about 30km to Yallingup and had our choice of the sites in the van park. 

It is still the off season here and nobody is camping. We are one of only two or three caravans in the park. The park is right opposite the beach and you can hear the waves all day and night. There was surf too for Pa, pretty crowded though as it was a Saturday.

After lunch we headed out to Cape Naturaliste for a drive. The lighthouse has a great view of the sea for nearly 300 degrees. We watched lots of whales in the distance. There was also a good rain storm out to sea – heading towards us of course.

We took a track through the national park to Sugarloaf Rock. This is on the Western side of the peninsula and is very rugged. We walked down a track to get a good view.

There are lots of lilies in the paddocks and bush here. They grow like wildflowers.

Again the rain came for a few days so we headed off to Ngilgi Cave. This limestone cave was the first tourist attraction in Western Australia having opened in the early 1900s. Back then they descended into this cave on ropes and it was fashionable to honeymoon here. They even built a Caves House, much like the one at Jenolan for the tourists. The cave was awesome though and it was a self-guided tour, meaning we could go wherever we liked as long as we stayed on the paths. The caves have been fashioned by water dissolving the limestone over millions of years to form magical shapes and structure like shawls, stalactites, stalagmites, flows and columns. There are many caves around this area open to the public.

We drove around the beaches and visited Canal Rock. The wind was onshore of course and the seas were very choppy.

Nanna found a rock that looked like a fossil elephant skull.

We visited a winery and chocolatier – of course Nanna bought some chocolates. There are lots of ringneck parrots and magpies around and they are very friendly.

The sunset was nice as the clouds parted for a brief moment.

Even though the weather is not very nice, we are enjoying this part of WA as it is different again from the other parts. The wild beaches and beautiful green paddocks and unspoilt bush combine to make it a tourist hotspot with many wineries and produce stores.

We headed off for Prevelly which is the beach area of Margaret River. Margaret River is actually 8km inland so Prevelly is the little village on the beach. The van park is fantastic with again a choice of sites due to the fact we were practically the only ones there. Very green and lush with the park protected from the force of the rain and wind by a large hill between the beach and the park.   The surf is blown out completely by the strong onshore winds so Pa won’t be surfing here soon.

We went into Margaret River and poked around the shops. It is larger than we thought with a good variety of shops – even a Bunnings!