February 19 – Busselton, Australia

We love Busselton.  They have an absolutely massive bay but it is very shallow so the ship had to anchor a very long ways out into the bay.  The bay is ringed with beautiful sandy beaches. 

The tender docked on the jetty.  The most notable feature in Busselton is the jetty.  It extends 1.8 kilometers (1.12 miles) out into the Geographe Bay.  It used to be longer but a cyclone took out the end of it some time back.

This is a photo of a photo of the jetty.

We got tickets to take the little train out to the end and the killed some time waiting for our boarding time.  We took a walk along the water front with each beaches and swimming areas. 

We then headed into town where there was a small market set up with crafts and a single major street heading away from the waterfront. 

Just outside of the “major” shopping area was the small St Mary’s Church.  We took a look inside.  There were parishioners there sharing information about the church history.  It wasn’t very big but it did have some very pretty stained glass windows...

and a small cemetery nearby.

Then we headed back to the jetty to catch our train to the end of the jetty.  At the end of the jetty is one of only six natural aquarium/observatories in the world.  By natural it means that you walk down into the structure that is mainly below sea level and observe whatever aquatic life wanders by.  The aquarium descends almost 9.5 meters (31 feet) down into the sea bed.  (That is how shallow the bay is…1 mile out it is still only 30 feet deep).

The lower levels have a number of windows so that you can observe the fish cruising by the windows.  

The jetty had a number of piles (the large wooden posts holding up the jetty) so there were also a lot of sea sponges, coral and other animals growing on them.  Apparently when they did restoration work on the jetty they left the old piles as well as adding new ones.  The old ones were left in place as they already had colonies of many marine creates residing on them.

Back on top we watched the train “turn around”.  They have a very ingenious process with the engine equipped with wheels that are a combination of both rubber tires and “rims”.  The train runs on the tracks on the rims but when it gets to the end they unhitch it from the train, drive off (on the rubber tires) to the other end of the train and reconnect it to the train.  It then heads back the other direction on the rails via the rims. This way they don't have to turn the train cars around.

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Video of train turnaround.
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On the way back to the ship we saw a number of sail boats out in full sail.  Apparently they were having a rather large regatta today but midday there was no winds so the boats pretty much just set out in the water not doing much.  But by the time we headed back to the ship the winds had picked up and the ships were sailing right along.  Very pretty.