The Parfitt Family Web Page

  Jurien Bay Continued Well as has become commonplace with us we ended up staying a few days longer than we planned in Jurien Bay and saw a few more sights. Our first visit was off to Lake Thetis to see a couple of stromatolites. This is one of the few sites in the world where living stromatolites can be found, occurring as domes of limestone around the edge of the lake. These guys are formed by the activity of microbial communities trapping and binding sediment and precipitating calcium carbonate from the water. Interesting hey. The dominant microbes are known as blue-green algae. These stromatolites are very slow growing and these are more than 1,200 years old. As you can imagine this was the highlight of the kids day. The adults on the other hand found it all very fascinating. Next stop was off to Sandy Cape which is only about 10 kms north of Jurien Bay. The kids were more excited about this part of the day because we were going to try out Wayne's sandboard on some of the dune...

  A very "Happy Easter"to you all. Bunbury Our next stop is the city of Bunbury. This is in fact the second largest city in WA. This is yet another very appealing place very much surrounded by water. In a lot of ways it reminded us of Port Lincoln. The amount of building and flash sub-divisions is staggering. Right in the middle of town is a lookout tower. This is a very modern structure with an internal spiral staircase that has a great view upon reaching the top. You look down over a thousand (no exaggeration) new homes all far too big for their blocks of land. Beyond the homes you look over one of the many large harbours that surround the city. It's no wonder there is such a shortage of tradesmen over here. They must be working day and night to keep up with this ridiculous demand. We settled on a nice 'Top Tourist' caravan park a few kms out of town complete with tennis court, putt putt golf, a lovely pool (bit cold for that caper) and of course the playground....