Busselton, WA – Rain, chocolate, beer and a really long jetty

As we drove down from Perth towards Busselton, we encountered our first solid rain. The drive mainly took us through rural areas with fields of sheep and cows appearing at regular intervals. Towards the end of the drive, we saw a tourist route that would take us through the Tuart Forest National Park. Being tourists, we thought we might as well check it out. The drive was gorgeous, winding its way through tall treed forests, with huge pockets of lilies along the way. The dark clouds and rain made the greens really vivid and dark, creating a great background for the pure white of the flowers, with the textured brown trunks of the Tuart trees adding to the scene. We soon made it to Busselton and after deciding on a caravan park and site, I set up while Kat took the kids for a ride down to the skate park across the road. Back in Jurien Bay the kids had each found a WA painted rock, a great initiative where you paint a pebble, write your postcode on the bottom and then leave it in hiding places for someone else to find. The idea is that if you find one, you take it and put it somewhere new, leaving it for someone else to find, so the kids each found a place and left their rocks to bring a smile to another child’s face. The rain soon returned so Kat and the kids came back to camp and we got on with sorting out dinner. The weather didn’t really ease after that so we retired to bed.

The next morning we awoke to an overcast day but at least there was no rain. After breakfast we walked down to the shore and headed to the Busselton Jetty, which was a massive 1.8km jetty previously used to load wool and other goods onto waiting ships that could not come into shore as it was too shallow. We walked out along it to the end, following the train tracks that ran the length of it. There were questions and answers along the length of the jetty, revealing many interesting facts about the history of the jetty, which the kids really enjoyed readying. Once we made it to the end, the kids had a look in the gift shop but managed to resist buying anything before we headed back, managing to avoid being run over by the train which was now carting a load of tourists back to shore. After a stop at yet another gift shop at the town end, I took the kids to the skate park while Kat went back to camp to make some lunch. There was a big bowl there, which looked like an empty swimming pool. The kids had a great time running around inside it, climbing up the walls and sliding back down. After they ran themselves ragged there for a while, Kat came back and we all jumped in the car. We were headed to the Margaret River Chocolate Factory, which the kids were understandably very excited about. The name was probably a bit misleading, as it was mostly a massive chocolate shop, full of an amazing array of chocolates that they made. There was however a viewing window into the area where they made the chocolates, where we could see three big spinning wheels, each with a different type of chocolate. With molten white, milk and dark chocolate oozing before the kids eyes, they were in heaven. Even better, there were three massive bowls of chocolate buttons that we could help ourselves to. I think we all went back to the sample station about 10 times during our time there. We sat at the cafe and enjoyed hot chocolates before finally leaving (via the sample bowls one last time). We then tracked down a brewery (The Cheeky Monkey Brewery) which had a big kids playground. Kat and I enjoyed a beer and hot chips while the kids played in the playground, before we headed back to Busselton. The rain had started up again so we set up the kids swags inside to create a couch so they could watch a movie while we did some planning on where we would go in the south west. We then made dinner in the camp kitchen before heading to bed to escape the cold and rain.

The rain continued through the night, with the campground becoming a soggy mess the next day. The weather was really starting to get us down, and tension was growing in everyone as a result. We decided it would be best to pack up and move on, as the rain and wind weren’t going anywhere. After packing up in the rain and getting already well and truly soaked, the gentle rain suddenly turned into a deluge just as I was hitching the trailer up. Needless to say my mood was not good as we drove off. We needed to find somewhere that was sheltered – the rain was not great but wind was our camper’s Achilles’ heel as we couldn’t leave the awning out in strong wind, meaning that the kitchen was not covered.