Gnomesville and Busselton

Its on the map, well at least some maps; Gnomesville. Its at a roundabout near Wellington Mill, east of Dardanup, and there must be 1000s and 1000s of them. It seems that people will deposit their treasured gnomes here, often from very far afield, because 'they will be happier here with their own people, this is where they belong'.

I found Buddha, looking as calm and serene as ever, sitting amongst mayhem and hubbub.

We are in the south west corner of WA. The style of travel seems to have changed slightly, as well as the scenery. It is so lush and green now, and everything seems so close together. After driving hundreds of km to get from place to place, we have the feeling that you can now just pop from place to place in a eyewink, and we have been pulling the van with us, having a series of over night stops at various official (or sneaky) stopping areas. Also, a lot of the place names end in 'up', like Boyanup and Yoganup and Cowaramup and Boranup and Yallingup it goes on... The 'up' apparently means 'place of' in the local Aboriginal Noongar language.

After back tracking from our foresty campspot near the Tuart Forest National Park to Gnomesville and Donnybrooks 'Apple Funpark' for the kids, we retraced our steps, past the campspot again and spent an afternoon in Busselton. Busselton has a jetty which is 1.8km long, however we fished (again without success) from an adjacent smaller jetty - the kids weren't going to walk another 3.6km! You can see the long one in the background.

There are these white lillies growing wildly in this area, and quite extensively beyond this area. Apparently they are a pest, an obnoxious weed. How can they be? I found them so beautiful.