Harvey - Bunbury - on Day 3

Wednesday 23 November 1977. The morning was mild and windy and showery. The gravel area in front of the farm machinery business had puddles. I had a nice hotel breakfast then paid and got everything together and set off with painful stiffness on the less than 50 kilometre journey to Bunbury. It was a bit earlier than the previous two days. Through the discomfort and tiredness I was excited to think I was going to be cycling into Bunbury, having never been there except by train or in someone’s car.

I passed through Wokalup, 5km down the road. There was a big old hotel, now only a tavern, and Peter’s dairy. A goods train rumbled along the railway track and big trucks came and went from the dairy.

Showers came and went and there were a few places to stop and shelter and have a drink. I reached Brunswick Junction and stopped for a while to sit by the river with my sore feet in the water.

I passed a familiar landmark, White Rocks, a farm which ran up to the scarp, where a big limestone outcrop was plainly visible from road and rail.

The road was quite easy, running right beside the railway line for a long way. I wasn’t familiar with the approach to Bunbury from this direction but just followed the main road beside the railway until I came to the centre of town. There, opposite the railway station, was the Rose Hotel, so I got a room there. I locked my bike under the fire escape at the back, where the car-park and liquor outlet were. At the top of that was a door where I could go in and out to my upstairs room.

I changed into my bathers and trudged up Wellington Street to the beach. The swim was refreshing and soothing but the salt water stung sore parts of me. The weather was mild and windy and that beach at Bunbury is rougher than Cottesloe.

Another problem that had begun to develop was toothache. This was about 4 years after I had last been to a dentist, and 2 years before Janet persuaded me to go to hers, which I did and have never regretted it. It is silly not to go to the dentist for 6 years but it happens a lot, some people never go at all, even though they should. So, I had these episodes of toothache, and one troubled me on this evening in Bunbury. I don’t remember it subsequently during the ride so it must have passed.

I had a hot shower and washed my clothes, I forget where I hung them, maybe on the upstairs verandah.

I had a Chinese dinner at a restaurant in the main street, still there, some changes of name and ownership later.

I watched a bit of TV in the guest lounge which let onto a spacious upstairs verandah overlooking the main intersection in central Bunbury. It was noisy because I needed the doors open.

I had the worst night of the trip - the toothache was troublesome, though I had bought some analgesics, but the worst thing was a gang of yobs who had booked into the hotel and spent most of the night, after the bars closed, banging in and out of their rooms slamming doors and running up and down the corridor and shouting.

Charles A Pierce