We continued our camping adventure to Busselton, where we hoped that the storms would cease and let us at least explore the town properly. No camp site planned we was lucky enough to come across Sandy Bay caravan park. A lovely campsite with great facilities and a 10 second stroll to the beach. Pitching the tent we set off into the town to see what was around and about. The rain crashed down so as we made a quick walking tour of the promenade and the shops we set off back to the campsite to try out their BBQ facilities and to crack open the wine again! With the wind finally slowing slightly we decided to try and sleep in the tent again as we had only managed one night so far with the weather we had experienced. A night of rain left us damp and stiff by the next morning so we declared that we would use the tent as a storage space from now on, so we would have maximum sleeping space in the car. Joey was alot more comfortable and quiet!
After another day of exploring we decided that as the weather was meant to calm down for the following day, we would try our luck at fishing off the peer. 1.8km long the peer is known for Crabs, Whiting and Snappers and we had heard that the local campsite boy had pulled a lovely 15kilo red snapper from the peer only the week before earning his photo in the local paper. Buying a couple of rigs and a few bags of squid we set off to the peer. Again nothing in Australia comes for free and it even cost us $5 to get onto the peer. Walking half way down we rigged up our lines and dropped them into the water. Within about two minutes my handline started pulling and I pulled up a puffer fish...First fish award to Hayley! Soon we was both pulling up small Whiting, Herring and Trevallys. Getting abit bored of the small fish I baited up my larger snapper rig and dropped line again. Within 5 minutes I felt some tugging again and pulling up the fish I was eagerly looking for the red colour of a tasty snapper. Instead I got a large red coloured fish that I didn't fully recognise. Red top with a white body and green wing type fins; I recognised the fins but couldn't remember the name and as the locals gathered round no one recognised it as being common to these waters, it wasn't even in the local fisheries book. Being unsure about it we decided to release it to live another day, and upon further inspection on google I later found it to be a Red Gurnard...A fish which we could have ate. However we were told the fisheries were extremely strict and only some types of fish could be caught and they had to be certain sizes. In all it may have been a good thing that we did release him... Biggest fish award to Hayley! After the Gurnard Jonathan was keen to catch something similar but unfortunately we pulled up so many small fish we lost count so the award for the most is unknown. A great fun day of fishing and after 6 hours we was tired.
The following day we set off to explore the coastline and headed to nearby Dunsborough and Yallingup. Both places had some lovely views of the sea and again the beaches were very pretty. Finishing up we tried our luck at fishing again but only for a couple of hours, and again we only pulled up the small fish.
We had a great time in Busselton and spending 4 days there was definitely worth it. Aswell as the wine tour the fishing was another highlight and even though the weather has been cold and miserable we are thankful that it held off at the right time to allow us to enjoy some of our more favourite activities.
One stop left before the next house sit... Mandurah. Hayls and Jonathan x