The WA History Channel: Moondyne Joe advancing Australia fair; Broome or Busso?; Jolly Jetty Tour; Review: Bayside Geographe Bay Resort

It’s now nearly months since Roy and I have been forcibly confined to Western Australia – without one of us even having nicked a loaf of bread or a side of ham. And we’re gradually getting to know a bit about this aspect of local history, courtesy of granddaughter Mia (10).

Mia has the voice of an angel, and misses no opportunity to break into song. Last week, she had a solo part in her school grade’s performance of “Moondyne Joe” – a jolly ditty about a colourful Welshman convicted of stealing food  and sentenced to 10 years’ transportation. He became WA’s most famous bushranger, especially notorious for his numerous jailbreaks.

Broome or Busso?

Denied their annual winter getaway to the balmy shores of Bali thanks to the travel restrictions, Western Australians – our friends Debbie and Blaine among them – have this year been flocking to the spectacular Kimberley region’s pearling and tourist town of Broome, 1,681km north of Perth. Apart from camel safaris on Cable Beach, you can visit Willie Creek pearl farm, go kayaking, or just lie around sipping cocktails next to your Cable Beach hotel pool. Like Bali, but without cheap massages.

Normally, domestic air travel to Broome is prohibitively expensive for locals. But now, government-subsidised flights have jacked up its appeal – to the point where accommodation is booked up for the rest of the year and well into 2021. Just one disappointing drawback to a Broome visit? The place doesn’t seem to have a diminutive name, like Rotto (Rottness Island), Freo (Fremantle) or Busso (Busselton).

Busso it is, then

The Shire of Busselton, or “Busso”, is the Margaret River region’s biggest city – though I still find it hard to call a place so laid-back and low-rise anything more than a town, at best.

One of WA’s oldest settlements, it’s named after one of its founding families, the Bussells. One wonders whether John Garrett Bussell, who first visited the area in 1831, was known to his friends as “Busso” – or perhaps they preferred “John-o”. (Wikipedia was strangely uninformative in this regard.)

Busso is most famous for a loo-oo-ong pier that, at 1.8km, claims to be the longest in the Southern Hemisphere. You can walk its 1.8km length and back, or take this cute train ($14pp return).

Visitor Centre

Tucked away behind things is this Visitor Centre, well worth a visit.

Jolly Jetty Tour

Roy and I had visited Busselton earlier in the year – but on a chilly and blustery day, and after the last train had departed at 3.30pm. Despite today’s 9am temperature of 7 degrees Celsius (not nearly enough of them), blue skies and only a light breeze made it the perfect morning for an old-fashioned expedition like this.

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Busselton is also historically famous for timber, and currently famous for whales – they were previously hunted off these shores, and now spotting whales is a great tourist attraction. Winter is whale season here in Geographe Bay – for humpbacks, Southern Rights, and even the truly gigantic blues – before they head down to the Antarctic.

No whales were to be spotted today; but at the end of the pier are several life-sized floor-paintings of these majestic marine mammoths, courtesy of local artist Ian Mutch. (“They’re covered in bird poo,” one of the jolly Jetty Tour volunteers had explained, “but we prefer to think of it as barnacles.”)

Review: Bayside Geographe Bay Resort

Once again, it was a Groupon offer* that brought us here – really not far at all from where we stayed on our last visit to this area (Bayshore Beachside Resort, Dunsborough). Again, we’re on the protected shores of Geographe Bay; again, we’re in extensive, manicured gardens in a villa that’s sheltered by the ubiquitous and relentlessly whispering peppermint trees.

This time, we had a three-bedroom spa villa (Jarrah, no. 65). Our spacious accommodation was furnished comfortably enough, with a king-sized bed and a super spa bath in the en-suite. That meant we could easily invite Lynn and Kim to visit from nearby Yallingup, to stay for dinner and not to have to drive home afterwards.

But if the overall impression was somewhat bleak, that’s because the stark white walls are completely unadorned. It’s like they got so far and then the accountant said, whoah, stop! There’s not even a single cushion on a sofa. If budget were an issue and I were in charge, I’d start by zhuzh-ing the place up with a truckload of scatter cushions from Spotlight and a gross of inexpensive IKEA prints. How hard would that be?

The kitchen was serviceable but basic – a fridge-freezer, a microwave oven, a four-plate gas stove-top, crockery, cutlery and the basic appliances; but no oven, and certainly no dishwasher. (Luckily, I’d brought my own along, and his cycle is short and carbon-efficient.)

A nice-looking heated indoor pool is located just before you exit the grounds  and on to the beach path. We’d packed our swimmers just in case, but the pool’s a bit too small for lengths, and was occupied by families with children whenever I passed. (Why these short, noisy people weren’t at school was anyone’s guess. It was mid-term here in WA, and of course there’s zero interstate travel at the moment, let alone international.)

The resort’s Spinnaker’s Restaurant may not be the best eatery in Busselton, but it had the important virtue of being less than a stone’s throw from our villa.  That meant Roy could pour an extra finger or two of the pre-prandial Hendrick’s G&Ts.

Kim had the Tuesday ribs special ($25 including a glass of wine); the rest of us the salmon ($xx) with chips and salad or baby potatoes and veggies. Next morning, Kim being something of a breakfast man, we returned to the same smiling faces and did justice to the daily breakfast special: great value at $12.50, including tea or coffee. I was impressed that they did a gluten-free option for a couple of dollars more.

• I’d booked a two-bedroom villa and upgraded to the three-bedroom spa villa for an extra $40 per night. They threw in a bottle of wine, another of lemonade, a late checkout (11am) and a packet of microwave popcorn to go with free movies from the video library at Reception.