Bunbury to Margaret River

November 6 to November 13

Gnomesville - go figure

We left you last week as we headed over to our host’s cellar door at Thompson Brook Winery. Terry and Pam, the winery owners, offer their grassy car park for overnight stays. We had an interesting and enjoyable afternoon chatting, drinking, and listening to wine bottles explode. They had a bottling of rose which was fermenting after bottling, exploding and making a hell of a mess of their storeroom.

Busselton Jetty, Emerald Princess in background

They only established the vineyard in 1998 with their first vintage in 2002, and are a true boutique winery as they now pick, crush, process and bottle on site, and have some 6 different varieties of grape. The wine was reasonable, I’m sure it is hard to produce wine in crushes of about 1 tonne of grapes for a bottling.

Yallingup coastline

Monday we visited Donnybrook, about 6km from the winery. There are a number of fertile valleys in this region, so did a tourist drive through the Ferguson Valley and Preston Valley, which included the remarkable Gnomesville. There is no town here, only a three way road junction which was dangerous for the local school bus, so in the early 1990’s they built a roundabout. A bored local placed a gnome in a hollow in a tree at the roundabout. From there it grew as locals then tourists began “donating” gnomes to the site. The council saw the potential and assisted in maintaining and expanding the area so it now covers a couple of hundred metres of roadside around the roundabout.

Canal Rocks, Yallingup

We stayed at the winery again on Monday night before heading towards Busselton on Tuesday. We checked out some interesting sites like the Iron Stone Gully Falls, and the coastal area of Peppermint Grove. We stayed overnight at a free camp 15km out of Busselton at the edge of the Tuart Forest National Park. The Tuart tree was heavily logged in this area in the past century, but the national Park has some 300-400 year old examples of the tree.

Seagull with chick, Busselton Jetty

We drove into Busselton Wednesday and walked the jetty. The Emerald Princess, the largest cruise ship of the Princess fleet to visit Australia, had just docked in Geographe Bay off Busselton. Some 3000 passengers and 1000 staff were ferried into town, you could say it was busy.

We checked in to a central caravan park right near the jetty in Busselton for a couple of days, to catch up on washing, chores, etc. Thursday the weather turned nasty with rain and wind and 19⁰C, so we walked around town and along the coastline between showers.

With Ed and Pam, breakfast Margaret River style

Friday we drove west from Busselton to Dunsborough, the northern township of the Margaret River region. We continued to the most westerly point, Cape Naturaliste. This cape has magnificent cliffs and beach coves where the Indian Ocean meets Geographe Bay. We walked the cape loop track to take in the views from the cliffs surrounding the lighthouse. Friday night we stayed at Yallingup, then continued our scenic drive on Saturday, in and out of the spectacular bays of the northern Margaret River region.

We had organised to meet up with an old work mate from my Nalco days, Ed, and his wife Pam. They had kindly offered for us to park on their property for a few days as we enjoyed the region. We had a fabulous afternoon and evening catching up. Sunday breakfast was at the beach at Prevelly with Ed and Pam, overlooking a building two metre surf swell, very hard to beat.