We escaped with a bottle of the Petit Verdot, which seemed to be the ticket with the promise of a wood fire in the caravan park chalet we'd booked for the night. Less than an hour later we'd made our way to Sandy Bay Holiday Park on the southern outskirts of Busselton, where the night's accommodation looked snug and could have been parlayed into a three-nighter at a very reasonable rate had we been so inclined.
That, however, would have involved a good half-hour commute to and from Margaret River each day, so we were quite happy to maintain the original plan, thank you very much, highly attractive though the rates on offer may have been.
The most significant information we picked up was, however, news of the presence of a food court in the suburban shopping centre about a hundred metres further along the highway, and after we'd taken our time settling in, it was fairly obvious that a walk along the beach would give us a chance to check it out on the way back.
We'd stopped in Busselton en route to Sandy Bay and had noted that the waters seemed remarkably calm, what with the presence of the Indian Ocean just out there. The walk along the beach gave time to reflect that the waters in the lee of Cape Naturaliste, certainly did bear a remarkable resemblance to a millpond. Then again, with the Cape west north west of Busselton, anything coming from Madagascar is guaranteed to run into land before it gets to where we were standing. Around the corner, between Capes Naturaliste and Leeuwin, you have Margaret River’s surf breaks, but around where we were standing the waters presented the millpond to end all millponds.
From the beach we made our way back towards the highway, passing large unit and resort developments and landing in the shopping centre's food court a little too early to be ordering dinner, and at the wrong time of the week if we wee looking for the pizza and steakhouse options, both of which are closed on Tuesdays. That left us with a choice of Asian (Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese), fish and chips or a place that labelled itself as halal and included Cajun squid among the offerings.