Day 82 Friday 2nd September

Day 82 Friday 2nd September

We drove from Busselton to Augusta today, passing through some of the areas we had explored yesterday and discovering some new ones. We visited the surfing town of Gracetown but no one was out surfing. The whole way down the coast from Cape Naturaliste to Cape Leeuwin is peppered with surfing beaches and during the summer the area is crowded with surfers.  We visited a large picturesque bay that had a huge surf pounding in and here we saw some whales in quite close and frolicking in the sea. One even did a dive where his huge tail came up out of the water. We are really now back to the cool and wet conditions of the south so our kayaks and bathers have been put away and replaced with beanies and coats. We arrived in the small, pretty town of Augusta and booked into the caravan park. Our sites were beautiful, overlooking the Blackwood River estuary. After a quick bite for lunch we went for a drive. We drove to a memorial for the first European people to live herein 1830, the whalers. From here we drove down to the Cape Leeuwin lighthouse. It was pretty cold and windy and as it was quite a walk to the lighthouse, I stayed in the car. Rob did a tour of the lighthouse that was built in 1895 and Lyn and Steve visited the souvenir shop that was in one of the 3 old lighthouse keeper's cottages. We drove on and continued to enjoy the beautiful  coastal scenery. Once back at the caravans we went for a short but lovely walk along the path that follows the river.