Camping in the south-west.

A cute crab at Yallingup.

We spent a very relaxing 3 days in a few spots we'd not been to before. Spent a night at Yallingup Caravan Park, as it was the only place we could stay near the coast with a dog in tow. It was very noisy with a steady amount of traffic going past until just after midnight, then starting again at 5 am for the early surfers.
In the morning we went and wandered about on the rocks up the road from town, pretty amazing. Very good way to wake up.
From there, after a great beefburger at the Yallingup shop near the tav we went just up the road to Ngilgi Cave. I was amazingly relaxed about descending into the cave..thought I'd be more nervous but I think learning a bit about geology has made me well assured that the area we were in is very tectonically stable!! It was beautiful in there and about 21 degrees C, a pleasant coolness after the warmth of jumping around over rocks a little earlier. It has a very easy way around inside with handrails and lots of spots to stop.


Our next place along the way was to Conto's. Paul had visited a rocky coastal area there few years ago that he wanted to get a better look at. Our good ole car took us along the bumpy road out to Merchant Rock where we spent a good hour or more checking out some fascinating chunks. There were some intrusions (in the rocks) that were quite interesting. People have died there rock fishing so we stayed well clear of the slippery rocks near the edge.
I love rock pools so I did have a bit of a nose around some of those.
I was pretty impressed by seeing anemones in some of them - it's the first time I've seen them since I was 9.
One rocky pool we saw had hundreds of mosquito larvae but also plenty of crabs. That seemed odd.


Finally we made our way to Sue's Bridge, on Sue's Road (between Brockman and Vasse Highways) to spend the night. It was a well set-up campground, private car bays with fireplaces (not to be used in this extreme fire danger period), tables and nearby toilets. The river was quite close so we took our water-loving dog and ourselves down for a dip. Poor Gruntle had been in the car a lot as we weren't allowed to take him into any of the national parks so he was very pleased to get in and have a good swim around. The Blackwood River is still looking pretty good in this area. Some of the trees are very big, very tall and pretty amazing to look at.

Next day we slowly packed up and went to Busselton with the idea of going to the Busselton Jetty fish gallery at the end of the jetty but the timing was all wtong so we took the dog for another swim, this time in the ocean and headed for home.

Not a jot of gardening in site..heh.