Headed down to Bunbury after work last night with a view to spending most of the day in that general part of the world. One of the targets was Cape Naturaliste, which I think I last visited on the 1998 Victorian schools team trip. This was a tourist run, taking in most of the walking tracks in the area (the lighthouse itself is shrouded in scaffolding and tarpaulins and not very photogenic at present) - sometimes sandy or rocky but still nice to be out. Plenty of photo stops, as well as one to chat to Steve Craig and family who were walking in the opposite direction (not surprised I saw other orienteers there).
Other destinations on the day included Eagle Bay and Yallingup, before settling in for an afternoon at the Dunsborough pub in an ultimately frustrating football-watching session. Ended the day in Collie, a fast-declining coal-mining town: I felt as out of place having dinner in a pub here as I did as guest of honour at a Chinese pineapple harvest festival this time last year. (I avoided the pub which was advertising "skimpies", but the one I went to had them too).
Regional papers are normally pretty conservative, so I was a bit surprised to see the local Bunbury paper saying, in an article about the Busselton MP criticising the new(ish) WA government for failing to duplicate the road there yet, that she'd done sweet Fanny Adams about it during the eight years her lot were in charge (or words to that effect). Still, today was the day when, due to an unfortunate production error,
some news was published in the Daily Telegraph.