Jan 8 - 9 (Day 325-326) - Tuart to Darradup (Milyeannup State Forest)

280km

Friday 8 January

Last night we were joined by quite a few roof top campers and camper vans of various different nationalities. We couldn't quite believe how close they decided to park next to us at such a late time but thankfully they didn't seem to bother us with noise or music, only their engine running for quite some time both when they arrived and before they left in the morning. 

Today was a pretty unproductive day in terms of progress along our trip (spoiler alert: we ended up staying tonight at the same place we stayed last night!). The intention had been to look around Busselton and then head down towards Augusta. However there are NO free camps at all between Busselton and Augusta, so we knew we had to head off fairly early in order to cover all that route. Sadly we slept in a bit so didn't get on our way until after 10am so things weren't looking great!

Firstly we headed into Busselton to try and find another battery for our 12V box fan. We bought this in Darwin as a replacement for one of our old 240V units which broke. It's got a rechargeable battery inside which we didn't care about when we bought it, but we've found it's been really helpful to just pop down anywhere to get some breeze, so much so that we now usually run it off the battery all the time and recharge the battery while we drive. The battery only lasts a few hours though, so since they designed it with capacity for a second battery to double the run time we decided to see if we could get one in Busselton. It wasn't a high priority but we figured we'd try while we were using it on this trip. 

We found a Jaycar which sold these batteries, but unfortunately the type in these fans have a slightly different battery terminal configuration to prevent them being connected back to front. Despite trying a few spots in town we had no luck. Looks like we'll need to turn to eBay for this one!  

One thing we were very surprised about was the amount of traffic in Busselton! We've been through here in years past but it was a lot busier this time. Almost every time we tried to turn out into traffic it was a few minutes' wait.

After our unsuccessful, and as stated not at all urgent, battery-hunting exercise, Greg noticed when he unlocked the car the lights on the van didn't work. So a bit of investigating took place to work out what was wrong. He then came across the cables that connect the car and van which had been squashed, crushed and cut. This is the same problem which happened on our way up to Carnarvon in December - what happens is that when doing a sharp right hand turn, the edge of the towing hitch on the back of the car touches the side of the drawbar on the caravan, and the cables unfortunately sit right in that spot, so they get crunched at the same time. Thankfully not all of them but the important ones that connect the indicators etc. So we found a nice shady spot for Greg to be able to work while we got some lunch together.  The gas powered soldering iron got a work-out again, not assisted by a breeze which decided to pick up just at that time and blow across the working area. But Bek suggested putting the folding table up as a windbreak which helped.

 

 

 

We were all quite hot after lunch and Greg had finished fixing the cabling and also worked out that a fuse had blown so we headed to pick up some more fuses and then for the foreshore.

When we got to the foreshore the kids spotted a number of inflatable obstacles you could climb over and also slide on or jump from one to another. The kids had great fun, but unfortunately Bek mistimed a somersault off one, rotated a bit far and landed slightly face and tummy first. So she said she got quite winded and her head hurt. So we will keep an eye on that.

 

After enjoying a lovely swim we felt like an icecream so went to the nearby kiosk and got a few flavours between the 5 of us. Once we'd finished our icecreams the boys went on the nearby playground while we discussed where we would try and stay the night and made a few phone calls asking about availability but to no avail. It's a very busy time of year so we didn't like our chances. So after a few phone calls with no availability we decided to go back to the free camp we had come from that morning.

When we arrived there was only one other family with a caravan but by about 10pm it had filled up again with more vans, camper vans and other travellers in tents (mostly foreigners). Thankfully again they weren't any disturbance to us.

Saturday 9 January

Bek has woken today still with a mild head ache. She complained a bit last night about it after a somersault from the inflatable things at Busselton beach didn't quite go to plan. We've checked her eyes for concussion and they seem to be fine so we will continue to monitor her. She could have pulled a few neck muscles and they just need resting.

Today our mission is to cover all of Naturaliste Peninsula, which is the head of land down the bottom of WA which pokes out west into the Indian Ocean, with Dunsborough at the top and Augusta at the bottom. There are no free camps in this area so we'll aim to get out the other end to another free camp on the way up to Nannup.

Dunsborough

Main St, Dunsborough

Our first stop was in Dunsborough to fill up the water tanks. Dunsborough is the last town on the north-facing part of the Naturaliste Peninsula. As we approached Dunsborough it appeared to be a Saturday market going on which seemed to make everything busy. There were cars everywhere and carparks filled. The kids thought it would be nice to go to the market but we decided not to this time as we had been to a few up near Darwin and they all seem to be fairly similar in nature and also we wanted to make sure we had enough time to cover the bits of today we wanted to before headed to our camping spot. 

We stopped at the BP in Dunsborough where they have a water refill point and filled up the van's water tanks. It was pretty tricky trying to reverse out with all the cars going through but we made it eventually. It seems everyone in town and loads of tourists were all here for the markets!

 

 

Dunsborough Beach

We drove down to the foreshore just to have a look. The streets seem very narrow here so we didn't venture very far as it's just too hard to manoevre the caravan around.

The bay looked quite nice but unsurprisingly was fairly busy.

 

 

Yallingup

Yallingup

It only seemed about 10 minutes out of Dunsborough that we reached Yallingup, which sits at the northern end of the west coast of Naturaliste Peninsula. Driving into Yallingup offered an amazing view over the bay where dozens of surfers were enjoying the waves. We first drove into town a bit to do a u-turn around a roundabout, where there were coffee shops and crafty-trinkety-shops. With the surfing culture, it felt a lot like Byron Bay in NSW.

 

We sat and watched some people surfing for a few minutes then moved on.

Further down the highway the kids requested that we go back to the Margaret River chocolate factory and the Candy Cow which we had been to a few years ago when we had come down this way with Mum & Dad. As we drove along this stretch of the highway there seemed to be mostly Vineyards and cattle I'm assuming dairy cattle as there are quite a few dairy things around like Cheese factories and also Icecreameries etc. It seemed a lot like the Barrossa Valley and also McClaren Vale. 

 

 We spotted a Venison farm as we drove past and decided to spin around and go back and see if there was anything that we wanted. Also I discovered we needed to be on a different road to get to the Chocolate Factory so we made our way back up the Highway to the turn off.

 

 The Chocolate Factory seemed really busy to us also but when I asked one of the staff members they said it was actually very quiet and that normally they have about 2000 people through each day. WOW that's a lot. I'm glad we came when it was relatively quiet.

 

Next stop was just down the road at the Colony Concept which is a factory that produces all sorts of honey and other products with beeswax. Quite a lovely spot.  We tried various different flavoured honey and were told the differences then went on to choose what we would like. We were in the process of looking at different honey's when the friendly owner asked if we were staying around for lunch. We were actually getting a bit hungry so it didn't take much to twist our arm to stay and purchase some more goods. We got a platter or different meats and pickles and vegies and bread to share which filled us all up nicely. 

 We travelled a little further to the Dairy Company where we bought a bit of cheese and some strawberry yoghurt that was going out cheap because the used by date is getting close. 

 

The next stop the kids were pretty excited about which was the Candy Cow where they could spend some of there pocket money. They had various bins of lollies and you could fill a bag and then it would get weighed and you'd pay for it that way. But of course there was an opportunity to work out the math and which once they liked the best and how many of them the could get without missing out on some that they really wanted. I think it worked out well.

  

 

 Greg popped into the shop just next door to see if we could order a decaf iced coffee to which the guy replied we could. The kids and I walked in a few moments later and he commented on how nice it was to see us wearing skirts. I said thankyou and we asked why. He said that he was Christian and that he really valued modesty and appreciated when others chose to wear them, as it wasn't seen as much these days.

These were the only things we really wanted to see down this way so we headed for Augusta. We thought we might go for a quick swim there as the time is now close to 4pm. The water was lovely and cool and so clear. This spot reminded us a lot of either Port Vincent on Yorke Peninsula or Edithburgh on the Yorke Peninsula also. There were quite a few people here also but still no availability at the caravan parks. But that's ok we were happy to go and find a free camp. 

 

We made our way towards Darradup where Wikicamps told us there was a free camp. As we were driving along Greg kept spotting little side tracks that he thought would be good to investigate. But we drove on to where Wikicamps acutally showed where the spot was. We got there and had a look around there was already a few families parked and the drive through seemed quite narrow so we thought we would check out one of these tracks Greg had seen not too far back. It was perfect for us and it has cooled down nicely after quite a warm day.

-- Mim