Bunbury’s glorious Ocean Drive invokes warm memories of Perth’s coastline in the 1960s.
Bunbury’s beachfront is low-key, low-rise living, overlooking vast expanses of ocean and white sand, often with no-one in sight.
Single-storey homes provide uninterrupted views and while some holiday accommodation has gone-up another storey, it has been set-back from the road.
When we cruise down, school holidays have just ended and the sun-blessed beaches are bare. But central Bunbury is bustling with no available parking in the main streets.
Bunbury is dubbed City of Three Waters. The ocean is on one side, Koombana Bay is around the coastal corner and further along is Leschenault Estuary.
The major working port lives alongside visiting pods of dolphins, up to 100-strong, that happily swim close to shore to mingle with humans.
The waterways can all be viewed by following a timber stairway from Victoria Street up a steep climb to Marlston Hill lookout with its 360° sweeping views.
Less than two hours by road from Perth (175kms), Bunbury attracts interstate and international tourists for its close-up-and-personal interaction with the ducking dolphins. The interactive Dolphin Discovery Centre is handy atop the nearby sandhills.
Koombana Beach, providing calm, safe waters for dolphin-adoring tourists, is popular mid-week with local mums and young kids. Occasional banging sounds across the pristine water is a reminder of a port in action.
Bunbury can also truly brag about its art, especially with BRAG, Bunbury Regional Art Gallery and the biggest art collection in regional Australia.
The influence of Indigenous art is readily apparent in the region. Noongar people were the original inhabitants when the area was known as “Goomburrup”. European settlements evolved from the 1830s.
Bunbury has embraced its history and culture in a central museum and heritage centre which is delightfully uncluttered and easy to navigate.
Tourists might be surprised at the French names in the region. French explorer Captain Louis de Freycinet made the first registered sighting from his ship the Casuarina in 1803.
The expedition’s botanist, Leschenault de La Tour, had the honour of having Port Leschenault named after him. Geographe Bay was named after another ship in the fleet.
The city is understandably proud of its most famous son, John Forrest, who carved out a seat of power in the establishment of both Western Australia and the budding nation.
Sir John also had a wooden seat setting carved in Italy for his Perth home, now displayed in the visitor centre. The heavy, elaborate seats incorporate the family’s crest as well as the names of the three Forrest boys, John, Alexander and David. They have been passed down to family members.
The name of Bunbury’s first towering building, Hotel Lord John Forrest, reflects the city’s pride in its favourite pioneer (although this newspaper’s readers will have read that the final official paperwork to gong the ex-premier with a peerage wasn’t completed before he died). Sir John it is.
Bunbury, WA’s third-most populous city after Perth and Mandurah, is heading for a population tipped to exceed 100,000 by 2031.
Economic growth has been part of the region’s history since completion of the South Western Railway in 1893, linking Bunbury with Perth.
Despite the growth, wildlife abounds in all the waterways, cheek-by-jowl with industry.
Greater Bunbury includes the City of Bunbury and the shires of Capel, Dardanup and Harvey, stretching between Yarloop in the north, Boyanup to the south and Capel to the south-west.
Bunbury has been long-recognised for its culinary quality, available from the cappuccino strip on Victoria Street and several surrounding streets, as well as regular food markets; incoming motorists may stop for fresh local foods at the top-rated Bunbury Farmers Market on the highway.
