Bunbury/Busselton

Alright so again in an attempt to catch up the blog I will try to summarize the week and a half that we spent in Bunbury and Busselton. First off Bunbury. We booked into this small city for five days and for the most part we spent this time just relaxing and recovering after having spent almost a week in Perth. The running I am happy to announce has continued and Bunbury has a beautiful beach and many paths that we ran/hiked. As I said there are some beautiful beaches in Bunbury so we spent many afternoons basking in the sun (ask Amanda just how much time we spent in the sun -- let's just say we got a good reminder of why we wear sunscreen). In Bunbury on Wednesday evenings they have free sailing down at Koombama Bay so we took in some sailing... a lot more technical than you expect it to be. An extra bonus was the fact that everyone who was sailing could opt to race around the course at a specified time if they wanted to... being that we are competitive it wasn't even a question. Aside from a katamaram? nobody was able to pass us... therefore we have unofficially declared ourselves the VICTORS since the other boat is not in our class... and with that I have retired from the competitive world of sailing.
Now onto Busselton. We only spent three days here but we happened to select a good point to visit this small town. Aside from the chickens and less than clean hostel the town itself was very welcoming. We visited Busselton originally because of its 2 km long jetty (dock) that was used to transportgodods into the harbour from ships. In addition to this amazing walk "on" water we also caught the end of the Festival of Busselton. This is an annual festival that precedes the Australia Day weekend. There is a lot of entertainment and Amanda and I went to the crowning of the Festival Charity Queen which was announced right before the Burning of the Festival Spirit (a large man made of plaster floating on the river). At the end of the festival right before they set off the fireworks they light this giant figure on fire and let it burn to close the festival... However, the year that the Canadians came to visit it appears that the person in chart of lighting the man hopped on the stand and shifted the weight enough to tip the whole thing over in the river... so instead of seeing it go up in flames... the 2009 festival was declared closed as the Spirit was submerged in the river... quite memorable... We are now on to Margaret River next (wine country)... catch up with you all later.

*Note: in my rush last posting I forgot to mention that while in Perth we also visited the Western Australia Museum, which gave a brief look at the history of the state of Western Australia (along with a wide variety of stuffed animals -- a true taxidermist's dream) and we checked out an outdoor art show that viewed the world from above as we got to see some of the most beautiful and stricking pictures from all over the planet... along side each of these pictures was a caption that highlighted and emphasized some of the many economical, ecological and political problems that we as human beings are currently facing.

Take care and thanks for reading.