Busselton’s claim to fame is having the longest man-made wooden structure in the southern hemisphere. At just under 2km, it makes for a scary, blustery, bait-stinky walk. It is very narrow (in my experiences of piers) and there is only a hand rail on one side of it, which I clung to. (I guess that cuts down costs on an additional 2km of gal piping).
I developed pier-fear halfway into our walk because I tripped on the railway line, which, annoyingly, runs along the middle of this too-narrow structure, so that you have to walk with one foot inside the railway lines and one foot outside. (That’s if you want to hug the handrail). I was only too aware of how lucky I was that I didn’t go toppling over this wooden wonder, into the icy waters far below.
Since being in ‘Busso’ as it is affectionately known on local radio by the weather girl, we have had many remarkable coincidences – or serendipitous moments, if you prefer. (Why do people have such an aversion to the word ‘coincidence’?)
Ok, so here are just a few of our more bizarre coincidences:
First one.
(deleted)
Second one.
We met a man on the road called Keith. He told us that our bus looked familiar to him. 200km later he found us and came over for a chat. He said he realised why our bus rang bells for him. He was a bus mechanic and he worked on our bus 30 years ago when she was the Eumundi school bus!!!!!!!! And it doesn’t stop there. He and his wife are going to live in Howard when they finish their round Australia trip. We started our trip in Howard.
Third one.
Dave and I were in Busselton public library on the computers, updating our CVs and in walked Dave’s ex-workmate Ash, a shipwright. They worked together five years previously in Hastings, Vic. Dave was just looking at the company on the screen as he walked into the library! And Dave had just mentioned Ash yesterday and how Ash was a surfer. Apart from that, Dave hadn’t mentioned Ash for 5 years.
Fourth one.
We met a couple and had dinner with them in the camp kitchen at the caravan park. We were only chatting for a maximum of an hour and a half. In that time they mentioned a friend of theirs who had a bad case of diabetes, so bad in fact that his eyeballs bulged. In another conversation they mentioned the education in Australian schools and in their opinion, kids today are taught the same as what we were taught – “We learned about the Eureka Stockade, our kids are learning about the Eureka Stockade”. The next morning I started to read a Danny Katz book Dork Geek Jew and in one article he mentioned the Eureka Stockade AND bulging eyeballs due to sugar overloading. What are the odds?
And so, we continue our adventures in our yellow bus, in Busso.
Is that a coincidence too? Nah.
