Tropical storm Alfred, which was declassified from a category 2 cyclone, arrived at Brisbane about the time we were supposed to fly in from Perth. Quantas had rescheduled our flight to Sunday night, so we had an extra 36 hours or so to spend in WA. We decided that, rather than stay in Perth, we’d hire a car and take a trip down to the Margaret River region in South Western Australia.

We took the train to Perth Airport where we picked up our Toyota Corolla hire car from Budget, in the Hertz office. Our plan was to take two days and one night to do the equivalent of the tourist trips to the Margaret River region.

We needed a bit of assistance to connect my iPhone to the car’s system, so that we could use Google Maps, and had to buy a new USB C to lightning cable to keep my phone charged. But soon were were on our way, to Busselton. We took the slightly more scenic route and eventually found a general store / cafe to get a late breakfast; somewhere near Pinjarra. On the way Susan kept her eyes open for any launderette that would be open on Sunday afternoon / evening.

When we arrived at Busselton there was a beach volleyball tournament in progress. Since we weren’t on the coach trip we had time to walk to the end of the jetty and back. On our return we grabbed a coffee and cake and watched the volleyball for a while. Then we headed off to our motel in Margaret River – the name of both the town and the river.

When we checked in we discovered that the motel had a laundry room. We got change for the washer ( $5 ) and tumble drier ( $1 a go ) from the reception, where we also were given some excellent advice of where to visit the next day, plus a packet of detergent, loaded the machine and went off to the room. Since we were doing the laundry we decided to eat in the hotel’s restaurant. I had an enormous Chicken Parmigiana. Every now and then Susan went off to check the laundry, and on her return I then went to do the same thing; in total she failed to find the laundry room 3 times.