Western Australia Roadtrip: Part 1

Okay I should start typing my Perth trip before I forgot about it.

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Perth - Bunbury - Busselton - Dunsborough

After breakfast at home, Nadia's housemate, Dila sent us to Burswood to pick up our Campervan at the Wicked depot. Met many fellow backpackers ready for their roadtrips. But most of them headed to the North, to Monkey Mia or Exmouth. It's gonna be a longggg drive for them, but the Ningaloo Reef is sure a well worth drive.

Filled the petrol, and off we started the roadtrip. We headed 180km down south, heading to Bunbury.

 

We arrived in Bunbury 2 hours later, and headed to the Visitor Centre. What I like most about traveling in Western Australia was, their tourism promotion was good. No, make it great. There's Visitor Centre at every town, offering comprehensive maps and places of interest guide, and not to forget, with helpful and friendly staffs.

Our first stop was the Mangrove Boardwalk.

 

The boardwalk takes you on a journey through the mangrove swamp and along the way, there are information on the town’s history to keep you entertained.

 

There are also some waterbirds species to watch here.

No no.. stop searching. There's none in the picture. I didn't manage to capture them. T_T

We then drove to Marlston Waterfront to chill. 

 

As we were short of time  budget, we skipped lunch. Just grabbed a drink from Dome, and we were good to the next attraction, the Rotary Lookout Tower on Marlston Hill.

The Lookout is a spiral staircase with more than 100 steps, tiring I know, but it provides a spectacular 360 degree panoramic view of Bunbury. Totally worth the climb. From here you can view the city, Koombana Bay and the marina.

If you don't wish to climb the stairs, you can still obtain good views of Bunbury from the base of the lookout as it is located on a hill.

 

 

Bunbury Lighthouse

What's a trip to the Western Australia without checking out the beach off the Indian Ocean? One of the popular beach in the Bunbury region is the Back Beach. There's an area called the Wyalup-Rocky Point.

See the black rocks there?

It's the basalt rock formations, where it was part of a lava flow approximately thousands of years ago. Definitely a distinct and eye-catching feature on this beach.

On our way to Boulters Height Lookout, we came across this war memorial.

 

The memorial is dedicated to the memory of all Australian servicemen and servicewomen and their allies who paid the supreme sacrifice in the service of their nation.

After we finished with our ritual camwhoring activities, we made way to our original destination, the Boulters Height.

It is a lookout in the centre of Bunbury, offering views across the city and Leschenault Inlet. Another alternative to the Marslton Lookout. 

who is this Arthur Dann I also don't know.. maybe he's the one building the staircase?!?

A popular tourist spot here is actually the Dolphin Discovery Centre but we decided to skip it. So, that's about it for Bunbury.

We continued our journey to Busselton, a town about 60km further south.

In Busselton, the one thing you should never miss is to walk the famous Busselton Jetty.

 

With the length of almost 2km, it is said to be the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere.

I wasn't sure if we could actually walk until the end of the jetty, because the access was limited at the time of my visit. I could only access it for like 200m or so as it was closed due to restoration project.

 

I missed the opportunity to ride the Jetty Train and visit the Underwater Observatory. T_T

Basically, according to Nadia, that's the only attraction in Busselton. Of course there are much more to see and do here, but time is limited so we only covered the important ones.

We spent some time playing around the nearby park, just for the sake of lepak lama sikit kat Busselton. hahaha...

We proceeded to Dunsborough to spend the night. The neighbour town is only 25km apart.

I thought we could just park our campervan by the beach and did a campfire but Nadia said it wasn't allowed by the authorities. So, we drove to find a caravan park.

One of the park charged AUD13 per person (if I'm not mistaken I didn't jot it down) but we thought it was expensive. So we passed it and looked for other parks. I told you tourism in Western Australia was good. In a town, there's a few caravan and holiday parks to choose from.

We then crashed Peppermint Park Eco Village and Holiday Park (I think).. it was dark as we entered the gate and saw the office was already closed. So, off we drove in. ;p

Jahat kan? Masuk tak bayar.. but in our defense, the reception counter was already closed! hahahahha...

Had our shower, cooked dinner and

Good night!