Bunbury

We arrived at Bunbury where I am due to pick up my new Mastercard which I have been chasing for months - bloody hopeless Westpac is not only doing vile things all around but it managed to make life difficult for me by changing from Visa to Mastercard.

Bunbury is doing a 2 year trial of having a 48 hour rest area near the city centre.  It is one of the nicest places we stayed at for free.  Tomorrow is washing day and we are going to a caravan park :-)

Maxi eating a chicken neck, surrounded by the local vultures, the seagulls.

These 'foamy channels' in the basalt below the car park are quite photogenic.

More leaning trees.  As I have remarked before it is not for nothing WA is known as Windy Always.

This building is the Bunbury Tower - colloquially known as 'The Milk Carton' or 'The Shark' - and is a point of reference on the Bunbury skyline. It was built by Alan Bond in 1986 as part of decentralisation of government agencies from Perth

The Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre.

An interesting building, China City Garden, built from 1892 originally as a restaurant and catering business, renovated in 1902 and has been the site of various businesses.

What seems to be a baby kookaburra taken by Andrew along the mangroves of the Leschenault inlet.  But friends have probably more correctly identified the bird as a little pied cormorant - thanks Mattie and Marcel :-)

Bunbury is full of murals on various walls of the city.  This was the brainchild of Andrew Frazer who had been captivated by a series of large scale murals in Richmond, Virginia.  The idea is to engage community through shared stories and a sense of belonging.  The idea is that art brings people together and makes a city feel like a home.  The murals are certainly very captivating.

This mural is perhaps the most interesting and it captures the history of Bunbury but unfortunately cars are parked in front of it which makes it difficult to appreciate the mural in full.

The Bunbury Art Gallery which occupies a former convent.

A mural at the back of the gallery.

It is a nice town and we enjoyed being here.  We were struck by the fact that both the caravan park and the rest area were very sparsely populated, in spite of the fact that it is currently school holidays.  The townspeople told us that Bunbury has never been much of a tourist destination and people tend to bypass it either going north or south.

The observation tower where you can climb up to get a nice 360 degree view of the town.

A view over the inlet.