Today was planned as a day to look around Busselton while the car was serviced. The weather gods were kind and we were able to set off on a 23km bike ride on the waterfront cycleways of Busselton.  The cycleways are really well done, and even better very flat. It was so nice to be back on our bikes after the Rottnest hire bike experience. 

When we finished the ride we went straight into a tour of the Busselton Jetty underwater observatory that included transport on the  cool solar powered tourist train to the end of the 1800m jetty. The observatory lets you walk down inside a concrete cylinder and look through windows at the marine life at the different water levels as you drop from the surface of the water down to the sea floor in 8-9m of water. The observatory included a lot of educational information around the marine life at the jetty, and the influence of the Leeuwin current which brings warm water from the north. The highlight at the surface was Cecelia the sea lion, who hangs around the observatory after the observatory staff helped save her a few years ago. The marine life varied at each level, with colourful growth on the old timber pylons and fish life at each level. Kerri comment – it was so good not to be freezing and wet observing this 🙂 .

We picked up the car after the service and decided to abandon tentative plans to visit another national park Bob researched yesterday. Sometimes a slowing of pace is really needed. Instead we knocked off a few shopping and van maintenance chores which was very worthwhile.

Karen and Kieran spent the early part of today exploring the Cape Naturaliste area, and after what they saw came back with plans to revisit this area on the Cape to Cape walk. Kieran put the drone up when they were lucky enough to come across mum and calf humpbacks feeding. A low battery alarm with ‘return to home’ functionality turned into major stress when ‘home’ hadn’t been updated to where Kieran was standing. Kieran managed to override and get the drone over land before it auto landed with depleted battery. Unfortunately he had no idea where that was. After some hectic googling the coordinates of the drone prior to landing were retrieved and they amazingly found it over a kilometre down the road…The photos retrieved from the memory card were so worth it!

After finishing their coastal explore they returned to Busselton and went on an afternoon tour to the jetty observatory.

Jason and Sue got some squidding in this morning before heading out to Cape Naturaliste to check out the coastline and some of the amazing coastal rock formations. Sounds like the canal rocks were really pumping this afternoon!

This evening we all got together for a great dinner for our last night in Busselton at the local brewery, the Shelter. Tomorrow we move through to our winery camp in the Margaret River region.