Today we had breakfast, again at Samovar as they have fantastic food, and then went to the pre-race briefing.  That lasted about 45 minutes to an hour.  After that we went back to the hotel so Dad could get all his gear ready and take it back to the bike check in and transition.  I decided to take out one of the hotel bikes for a ride again, and after that, I went in to town to walk around, but most of the stores were closed.

So I walked the famous Busselton Jetty, which is 2 km long, and at that length is the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere.  Here is an aerial image I found on-line, but I wish it was bigger so you could appreciate it more.

At the end of the jetty is an underwater observatory, but I did not do that as you need to do it as part of a tour…  Beyond the observatory the jetty is closed due to disrepair…  You can see a bunch of birds on it in the photos below.

The jetty also marks the swim course, which stars on the left of this photo, goes all the way out and around, and back in along the jetty almost to the end, before cutting over towards the swim exit.  You’ll see a bunch of buoys marking the course.

Here are some photos from the day, including a shot of the “athletes village” just after the meeting, a huge lizzard I saw while riding, and the rest of the jetty I took while walking it.  The jetty is open during the swim so I will be able to walk it and take pictures of the swim from there.

After my paddle, I decided to go on a hike.  I was right in the middle of the “Cape to Cape Track,” a 135 km trek along the coast.   I went north about an hour and then turned around, following the track along single track hiking tail, jeep trails, and the beach.   A lot of the trail was like sugar sand, so I was glad I wore my keens (and I had to cross the river to get started).  The coast line was fantastically beautiful!

Here I am just going to use this blog’s feature of a gallery to show the pictures.

Today Dad and I swam about 30 minutes on the course again.  Water was much calmer than a couple days ago!  After that, we went back to Samovar for breakfast — that is 3 days in row, but they have fantastic food.  🙂

Dad is pretty much in laid back mode now, so I decided to take the car down to Margaret River, a town about 40 km away.    From there it was another 15 km or so to Surfer’s Point and the mouth of the River itself.  Surfer’s Point was beautiful, and there were a lot of surfers out!  The Margaret Rive r comes out here, and what is interesting is that this whole beach used to be the mouth of the river, but due to all the wineries and damming, the river is much smaller than it once was.  In fact, the kayak lady told me that the river just “broke through” last night… Before the sand had built up and dammed the river.  The water builds up and breaks through.  In the winter it always runs freely, but in the summer, it will dam up and break a few times, and eventually dam up for the remainder of the summer!

I rented a canoe and paddled all the way to the end of the river and then back.  On the way back, I stopped at some cliffs and found a huge bee-hive:

That was the end… I could have portaged over this, but I could hear the cars on the bridge which marks the end of the part of the river that you can paddle in this area within 100 meters or so…

Here are some shot from the cliffs and beehive:

After I paddled from the cliffs back to the river mouth and turned in my boat and gear, I decided to go on a little hike… I’ll post shortly on that.

Today we follwed the other tri-travel athletes into town in our rental “bus” and did an open water swim of about 30 minutes.  Luke Bell, a top pro Australian athlete was there.  After the swim Dad and I found a good breakfast place in the town of Bussleton and then headed to the expo.  Only the two official exhibitors were set up — the rest will be ready Thursday.

When we got back to the hotel, I decided to hire (that is “rent” in US English) a bike…  They have single speed beach cruisers only, and it turned out to be a tough ride when riding into the strong wind off the water!  There is a 25-30k paved path along the beach that goes south of our resort, as well as north past the downtown section of Busstleton, so I rode all of that and took the following pictures:

Later we headed back into town and had dinner at Vasse.  I had a somewhat strange but good risotto with pumpkin, spinach, corn, peas, feta, and fennel.

I am in Western Australia to watch my Dad race the Ironman on Sunday, December 7th, which I hope to liveblog, but we’ll see what kind of connectivity I can get in the somewhat small town of Busselton.  It took nearly 40 hours of travel to get into Perth from Raleigh, most of that in the air!  We stayed in Perth just one night, and then drove down to Busselton (about 3 hours away) the following day.

From our hotel in Perth we walked down to the river front and had dinner at an excellent restaurant called Halo’s.  The concierge had told me it was “Australian fare” but it was much more “gourmet” than we expected.