Monday 17 September – After a really good sleep we woke bright eyed and bushy tailed ready for the day.  And it has been a lovely warm day, though late afternoon some sort of clouds/sea mist came over for a while and looked a bit threatening.

It was around 9 when we left Karrinyup Caravan Park after farewelling our neighbours and wishing them all the best for their 50^th wedding anniversary today, drove through Scarborough to fill up with petrol, loaded Zola up with our destination (Bunbury) and followed her directions to the southbound freeway.

The Rendezvous Hotel where we stayed on Saturday night.

  Once we neared Rockingham we decided to continue the trip via the coast road, so we ignored Zola and improvised.  That went well for the first twenty minutes, then we discovered that at some time during that twenty minutes I had somehow mis-directed Grant at a roundabout, and for some time we had been travelling in a northerly direction!! OOOPS!! So it was time to check back in with Zola, and at some stage she mentioned that we were to turn onto Highway 1 which is where we wanted to be!  So we did as we were told, then ignored her again as she kept trying to get us back onto the freeway.  But we did heed her advice as we came into the city and she successfully got us to our caravan park.  We are staying at the Discovery Bunbury Village which is about six km south of the city centre, and is a very nice park with wonderful facilities for kids.

We then launched into our ‘arriving at our campsite’ routine  and got set up, this time we actually put up the flys which go over the sticking out ends (beds) of our van.  This morning on the news I heard that there is a chance of thunderstorms tonight and showers tomorrow, so we decided not to take the risk of getting everything soaked.  This is the first time we’ve put out the flys on the whole trip – and maybe unnecessarily, but better to be safe than sorry.

After lunch, cuppas and a bit of a read we had a chat to a couple who had just checked in and were confused about how to put their camper trailer on the site with a concrete slab and concrete tracks for your wheels.  They weren’t young (maybe our age, but not very fit looking), and I reckon they must be slow learners or just slow because it took them ages to set up, and they looked exhausted when they were finally done.  At first I thought that they were locals who had just bought the camper and had come to the local caravan park to practice setting it up.  But when he said they were from Warrnambool, we figure that they must have had a reasonable amount of practice, so perhaps it’s time they got rid of this and bought something they don’t have to set up!

We went for a bit of a drive to the city centre (interesting fact – Bunbury is W.A’s third largest city) looking for a post office so that I could send away the wedding paperwork to the appropriate W.A. registrar.  When I’d done that we went for a bit of a drive to have a look at the lighthouse which is painted in a checkerboard design, then went for a drive down Ocean Drive which brought us down the coast a few km, and after one right hand turn, we found ourselves back at the caravan park.  From there we went to the supermarket just up the road a bit and replenished the meat and vegie supply for the next week before coming back  and just vegging out for the rest of the afternoon.

Bunbury’s unusual lighthouse.