Margaret River and Surrounds [tldr]

Posted on September 16, 2026 by wonko

Our home base in Margaret River is a lovely, spacious and modern home deep in wooded suburbia. Surrounded by large trees, teeming with wildlife, we are greeted by “our” flock of Ringnecked Parrots and wood pigeons in the morning and afternoon, and we even startled a rabbit on the front lawn coming home one evening.

Our first day’s explore of the region saw us heading north along the coast, with a visit to Canal Rock first. The coastline here is rugged and battered by rough seas. Canal Rock is a fascinating bit of geography, where the sedimentary layers have been tilted vertically, allowing the pounding ocean to cleave deep canyons (or canals) between them. The seas boil and crash and the currents are treacherous. There was a raised walkway across some of it, we also walked out onto a low jetty and were lucky not to get wet from the rough surf surging around us.

We had a spectacular rock hop to see the sights, then headed further north towards Sugarloaf Rock. Another ragged prominent weathered peak with boiling ocean around it, so spectacular.

We were heading towards Cape Naturaliste, as we had a lighthouse tour booked. We toured the museum and was really impressed with the way they depicted the lighthouse history and operations as a series of personal stories recounted as remembrance of past keepers and family members. The whole experience, including the moving shipwreck movie, were in the same artistic style – very well presented.

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Categories: Driving, Food, Highlights, Markets, planning, travel, WA, Walking | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Bunberry to Busselton

Posted on September 12, 2026 by wonko

Our new hire car, hereafter to be known as 10boop (because it takes 10 touches of the touchscreen dash to turn off all the oversensitive driver assist shit that gets in the way of actually driving the fucking thing) is spacious and very comfortable. It does not like doing the 40zone speeds popular in a lot of the suburban areas of towns in WA, and is gradually convincing us we do not ever want to buy a new generation Kia Ceranto C4. (Yes, we are soon to be in the market for a new car, so are trying things classified small cars to see what we like)

On our way to Margaret River, we took a rest stop at Mandurah, looking for one of the many timber sculptural “giants” that have been scattered around this region by an artist. Lovely expressive thing, so full of character. Not sure if we will have time to hunt down any of the others as they tend to be placed in out of the way places.

We then headed further south and overnighted in Bunbury, to break up the distance a little. We stayed on an oceanfront apartment with the most amazing ocean sunset view …only because they fucked up our booking and so offered a free upgrade. As transit stays go it was very comfortable. 

While in Bunbury we shopped for provisions at the “Bunbury Country Markets”, an amazing produce spot (not a million miles away from our own Harris Farm Markets) with exclusive produce, lots of gourmet things made in house and some beautiful fruit, veg, bread and the like. We ended up improvising a delicious dinner of Pumpkin gnocchi with fruit and cake for afters. Yum.

Next morning we got going fairly early as we needed to be at Busselton for a booked tour, so our pack-up and leave routine worked well, even though we are both a little fluey (the weather has been really variable, cold and that lazy wind takes some getting used to) – we seem to be on the mend however. Along the way we chose the “Tuart Forest drive”, a lovely scenic bit of road that weaves among giant Tuart trees. I am drawn to tree-lined roads and this was just wonderful. Scattered among the trees were Arum Lillies, thousands of them that looked magical. We later learned the Arum Lily is an introduced invasive species and a real pest as the only way to get rid of them is to dig them up. On this scale, that seems impossible to eradicate.

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Rottnest Island

Posted on September 10, 2026 by wonko

The “Rats Nest”

Rottnest island apparently got its name from Dutch explorers who saw all the Quokkas, thought they were rats and that the place was infested. “Rottnest” is old Dutch, but the islands rats are actually the cutest little marsupials you are likely to meet.

We had booked the shuttle bus to the Rottnest Island Ferry meaning an early morning start, having tightly packed (2 suitcases, a pantry bag and an esky), we set off to the transfer rendezvous point in good time. At the ferry terminal we affixed ID labels with our Rotty cabin number on them to our 2 suitcases, pantry bag and esky bag (apparently they deliver them up to the cabin), handed them over then boarded the ferry to Fremantle. After an uneventful trip we had to transfer to “Quokka 1”, the Island ferry. The seas were big, it was a pretty rough trip out from Fremantle to the main harbour on the island. Thankfully the Kwells helped me not feel seasick.

We arrived on Rottnest Island fairly early, and knew our accommodation would not be available until around 2pm so we had time to kill. We did let the accomodation people know we were here, checked in etc so if things got going earlier then we were ready. 

We checked out the main settlement briefly (mainly scoping where we would go for lunch later) before heading off for some diversionary walks around the immediate environs. We visited the General Store and found it very well stocked, a really decent range. Although you pay a premium we did not need to bring so much from the mainland, we could have easily provisioned from there. There was a range of eateries, cafes, an extensive bakery, this all surprised me as I thought we would be in the wilderness.

We headed towards Bathurst Lighthouse, the closest of the 2 lighthouses then on towards Pinky Beach, had a welcome island drink before heading back to main settlement for lunch. The overcast day turned to rain and fortunately we found a spot undercover to eat. I am not sure I like the main settlement that much. Apart from the large concentration of tourists, there are scrounging quokkas and mobs of aggressive seagulls and crows swooping for table snacks. Signs everywhere saying do not feed the animals seemed largely ineffective. We saw a number of quokkas here, mostly scrounging for snacks and digging into peoples bags. Some carried joeys, others had joeys following them, all very cute. All the shops have quokka-height barriers at the door to exclude the marsupials as I am sure they would make a mess if left unchecked.

After lunch we explored the local natural history Museum, learning a bit about the dark past of the island, and found the transport hub to get our accommodation shuttle passes and enquire about the hop on hop off service we would be using tomorrow. All that seemed pretty straightforward, which is always a good thing. 

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Categories: Highlights, Museum, travel, WA, Walking | Tags: , , | Leave a comment