Margaret River

 

We drove south to Margaret River, as I drove Emma looked up campsites in caravan parks and found a couple with openings. We figured we would just roll up to town and see the one we wanted and just grab a reservation then. We arrived at our chosen park at 6:03pm. Well, as it turns out, the entire town except the restaurants shut down at 6pm. On the dot. The office was closed. The lights were off, oh and you can’t book online once the office closes, even though all they needed to do was give us a code. We looked up the other campgrounds. Calling them. Turns out same thing. Hotels in our budget? Same thing. Except one. We finally found one around 7 that let you book online the day of. We booked the hotel… and went over… reception is closed, for the weekend. We called the after hours number and they told us nobody is working to give us a key. We told them we already paid online and 30 minutes later they came to meet us. I think I know why they were reluctant to meet us. The poor girl, who was clearly a working holiday worker, had clearly already begun her weekend partying, she apologized profusely and tried to cover her obvious tipsiness, and we felt a bit bad to have taken her away when she clearly thought nobody would be coming in, but we were grateful to have a place to sleep. Plus we were happy for a night in a bed and we went out for pizza for dinner. A great day.

The next morning, we got up and went to this incredible bakery, its no secret spot though, it was chockers with people a line out the door, but after getting a few pastries it was no surprise why it was so full. It was incredible. We drove to Busselton, which we kept calling Brussel sprout, and walked the jetty. At the end of the jetty is a natural aquarium. By that it means they built a column with lots of windows down to the seafloor and you can walk down the stairs and see all the wildlife outside living its life. It’s a really cool concept that gives people a look into the natural sea floor without having to manage all the tanks. Its more a a reverse aquarium where the fish look in on a tank of people.

After the jetty we went out the Cape Naturaliste where were did a few beautiful walks along the coast. In the distance we saw whales and along the trail we so so many dragonflies, more than I’ve ever seen anywhere. It was really neat. It was a beautiful day for some nice walks.

We followed up our hikes with some food and drinks from a local brewery before heading back to town to celebrate our journey with a few drinks at the bars talking about highlights of our journey.

 

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