Dunsborough and Cape Naturaliste

Wednesday 4 November



Yes, it was a fairly quiet day. We went to Dunsborough, a little place about 25 km west of here, then on to Cape Naturaliste where we did a tour of the lighthouse. It’s a good lighthouse to visit because it’s only about 60 or so steps up to the top. It’s on a hill so doesn’t need to be as high as most. It was built in 1903 and used to be manned until a few years ago when it was automated. They have kept the top rotating all the time since someone worked out that it was a bushfire danger to have it still, with all that glass concentrating sunlight in one place. It was a very interesting tour and while we were outside at the top we saw a group of whales breaching in the bay.


The bay is called Geographe Bay and was named by a French sailor Nicolas Bouvard who was sent by Napoleon in about 1804 to claim the Great South Land for France. His ships were the Geographe and the Naturaliste, hence the naming of local landmarks. The French were too late with the claiming, though, which may or may not be a good thing.


It’s a one-way trip out there so we came back to Dunsborough for lunch then back to Busselton to have a look at the town here. We saw the jetty, which is closed for repairs now. It was badly damaged in a fire and had to have major work done on it, should be finished next May. We saw a crane loading a couple of logs onto a barge to take them out to the jetty. Very interesting to watch how they did it.


I noticed the other day that just about all the tennis courts are lawn, unlike NSW where they are mostly the antbed type. I don’t know why I noticed that, just one of those odd things that make an impression.


One of the coach drivers we had last week mentioned that we might see lots of November lilies growing in the wild. We didn’t see any that day but I noticed a lot of them today on our way out to Dunsborough. They arrived here in soil brought from England as ballast in ships that came here to take timber back to England. They would just empty the ballast before taking on the timber, and any seeds or bulbs in the soil was introduced to the local area. There was a huge trade in karri and jarrah timbers in the 19th century, they are enormous trees.

There should be a couple of new photos in the slideshow now, I hope!