Busselton

We've had a very pleasant 2 weeks at Busselton, although the weather has been a bit iffy. While the east coast has been sweltering in record high temps, down here in Australia's south-west corner they're still waiting for a decent Spring to get started, let alone anything resembling Summer. Still, we scheduled touristing rather than golf on the wet days, and managed not to be too badly impacted.

This corner of Australia is home to Margaret River, and there are over 100 wineries in the area. Many of them have cellar doors open 7 days a week, and being only a bit over 2 hours drive from Perth the roads were heaving on the weekend with people trying to fit in a visit to every single one of them. We visited a fair selection, and while we didn't buy very much table wine, we couldn't resist a case of some excellent sparkling, so once again the van will be sitting down on the hubcaps. Like many wine areas, the concentration of visitors draws other tourist and gourmet businesses, so we also visited a chocolate factory, several cheese producers, an artisan brewer and a fabulous ice cream shop, as well as having a couple of lovely lunches in vineyard restaurants. Ice cream joke: an ice cream van has its music playing and lights on, with kids milling around, but no-one is serving. A policeman goes to investigate, peers into the van and sees the ice-cream man lying on the floor, covered in chocolate topping, 100s & 1000s, chocolate sprinkles and those little jelly things. He ushers the kids away from the sight, then radios the station. 'Quick, send someone down to the beach, the ice-cream man has topped himself!'

One of the area's sheep stations has also decided to cash in on the flood of visitors by running a sheep show each day. The farmer has his patter down to a fine art, and is very amusing. As well as a shearing demonstration, we had his dogs round up some of the sheep (necessitating an excited kelpie leaping across the sheep's backs) and the kids in the audience were able to hand feed some very young lambs. While the kids were thus distracted, the adults were treated to a demonstration of how the lambs' tails are docked, which isn't as gruesome as it sounds as it just involves putting an elastic band around them, so they shrivel up and drop off of their own accord. We'd been a bit dubious as to whether to attend this show, but in the end we really enjoyed it.

As well as the wineries, this corner of Australia has abundant natural attractions. There is over 100km of limestone coast which is a mecca for surfers, and is also pitted with caves. We visited 2 of the 6 caves that are open to tourists. The first was a standard guided tour, with all the speleotherms (limestone formations such as stalactites and stalagmites) lit up and given cutesy names. The second was smaller but much less developed - they had laid down a boardwalk but there were no lights, you were issued with a helmet and a torch and got to wander around on your own. It probably wouldn't have been very terribly impressive if it was crowded, but we were virtually on our own and the quiet and darkness is very affecting. When we got to the deepest part of the cave we sat on the bench provided and turned off our torches, no matter how long you'd stayed there your eyes would never have adjusted, you couldn't detect any different quality in the darkness even when you brought your hand right up in front of your face.

A lighthouse guards the southern and northern tips of the limestone coast, we did the tour of the northern lighthouse (Cape Naturaliste) but decided to just walk around the grounds of the southern most one (Cape Leeuwin). They are both still in use protecting shipping from the rugged coastline, although there is no longer a lighthouse keeper to stay up all night refueling a kerosene lamp and winding up the mechanism that turns the lens. Cape Leeuwin marks the point where the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean meet, from here on we start to head back east, having travelled the entire west coast of Australia.

Of course, land that is good for grapevines is also good for golf courses. We played a couple of extra games at Busselton as well as competing in last weekend's tournament, and also played at Capel, Dunsborough Lakes and Margaret River.