Margaret River and On

The last few days we have exploring around Margaret River. We had fairly high expectations as everyone kept raving about it. Must admit we thought it a little oversold! Yesterday we drove around checking out the local highlights. We visited a fine furniture place and the man who made it sounded disappointed when we didn't buy anything. Bit embarrassing.  For lunch we took the advice of our new friends and checked out a place called Olio Bella.

That was the highlight of our day. Instead of wine tasting they had tastings of oils, dukkahs, chutneys, jams, tapenades and all sorts of other things. It was all organic and made on the premises. Really, really yummy. We bought a couple of things as a treat and shared a Morrocan Lamb pizza which was just delicious. Just as well we did something as just before bed we realised it was our anniversary! Today we packed up and slowly made our way towards Bunbury.  First we went out the Canal Rocks. 

 

The Canal Rocks are an ancient and unusual rock formation, extending from a peninsula south Smiths Beach on the coastline between the towns of Yallingup and Margaret River.  These massive banks of granitic gneiss have eroded along a dead-straight line running north – south, forming the striking “canal” feature. Several smaller canals cross perpendicular to the main canal. About 750 million years ago, a large sheet of granite formed many kilometres below the earth's surface, as molten material cooled. After about another 500 million years, this part of Australia collided with India to form part of the southern super continent, Gondwana. Extreme pressures and temperatures deep within the Earth's crust affected the granite, turning it into the metamorphic or  "changed" rock with different characteristics from granite. This new rock was gneiss, which had a banding structure, which facilitated large parallel cracks forming as the rock cooled and later, as the continents drifted apart, the bands and cracks widened due to the stress applied.  As time went on, limestone was deposited on top of the gneiss forming many of the cliffs along the coast. It was deposited as wind blown sand dunes over the last 2 million years. Where the limestone has eroded exposing the gneiss, and the cracks in it, water was able to penetrate the cracks leading to erosion of the soft material in the fissures, and a significant widening of the cracks. As they widened, the action of the water increased until the canals and channels we see today were gradually formed.  Then it was onto Cape Naturaliste, the tip of the cape that just out at the bottom of Australia. Here we walked up to the Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse. 

 Dunsborough was next no then and then into Busselton where we walked along the longest jetty in the Southern Hemisphere- nearly 2 km in length. 

  After having lunch in the car park with passers by looking in, we headed off the our next overnight stop of Bunbury.  We weren't looking forward to this next 3 days as after booking online I had been contacted by the caravan park and told the site we had booked was a right on the road and quite noisy. As it was booked through a third party they couldn't cancel it so we would have lost the deposit if we cancelled. When we arrived though they managed to find us another site at the opposite end of the park which had an ensuite. The computer couldn't recalculate the extra charge so they let us have it for the same price.Cool!   

View from our site

 

Happy geoff