Busselton
After our early morning pick up by Anke at the airport, we took her to buy food for our organized weekend.
On Thursday we drove three hours south from Perth to Busselton in a sweet pretty cottage. There we made ourselves cozy and checked out the jetty, the longest of the southern hemisphere - 1.8km.
http://www.busseltonjetty.com.au/
On Friday morning we made our dive equipment ready and had a dive at the Busselton Jetty. 20 degrees water temperature was quite a difference colder, but we got Pete and Anke gloves, head covers and good wetsuits. But after an hour we were damn freezing of course.
Nevertheless, we got to see a lot. Sure, you can not compare it with the tropics. The visibility is less, corals are only a few there, but an exciting underwater world presented itself to us. It was great.
The dive made so much fun that we booked 2 dives on the destroyer HMAS Swan shipwreck for Sunday. It was sunk in 1997 for the diving world - is on 31m deapth - toilets, sinks, laundry and kitchen still in it.
On Saturday we drove down south to Margaret River. There is currently a Surf World Cup taking place, but we drove down there more because of the wineries. Free wine tasting was announced and it was really delicious.
We learned a few tricks off-road as Anke and Pete have took us off-road in their four-wheel drive. The route we took was quite demanding and not possible to drive with a normal car. We came to small, remote beaches and watched a few lonely surfers. And Nadine saw her first kangaroos, jippie.
We were almost back on the normal road, but came across a car - with four-wheel drive though- and hopelessly stuck. Since this was not a Jeep, he sat in on the soft sand with the entire body. So we helped him out first, and recommended him to turn, as the route gets harder and it was already dark.
Anke had spontaneously booked the next surprise the day before. We were on for a one and a half hours tour through the bush - on the backs of horses. Pete and Micha fought very bravely as novices and it was hilarious when they trot back and see them swinging.
After that, we were extremely dusty, because Australia is extremely dry and sandy. After the first day we had the first sunburn. So be careful, always nice lotion and stay in the shade.
On Sunday we went out by boat for 45 minutes. And there we dove twice the Swan, after we heard the beautiful story of the white shark. The day before there was a sighting...
The first dive the four of us were first in and last out off the water. Well, if you can just dive together with four dive instructors knowingly that the others are just as relaxed and little air consuming as yourself.
We dived the stern and found interesting things, swam through the entire second deck, and came out again on a watchtower. After 46 minutes then it was quite cold and we ended the dive.
When we came up, one other diver took even emergency oxygen. What happened exactly, we do not know. This couple did follow us and they were quite hectic underwater. Later they probably split the air and it must have happened that he inhaled some water. But he is alive…
The second dive was OK but not spectacular. Since the wreck was open for fishing there were not that many fish schools around. But puffer-fish in a school of a hundred was new to us.
On the way back to Perth we visited Cynthia for an hour. She is picking grapes at a winery and makes good money. Just funny to see her again. She will come to us next weekend and we will go together to the Pinnacles in the north.
As Anke needs to study a lot for university and Pete has a deadline for a huge project coming closer, we did go ourselves. We are in search of a campervan and plan the weekend with Cynthia.