13/3/22 Binningup

 

   So after leaving the airstrip , we head down to Binningup to meet up with a couple that we met on the cruise last year - that sounds so long ago !! - anyway , Phillip & Judith come from Tasmania and are here to help commission an onion picker - yes an onion picker - that he designed and sells from their business DOBMAC Agricultural Machinery , that their son now owns . More of that later .

 Monday we headed into Bunbury to get a few things , then on the way back we checked out the Binningup Golf Course & Country Club - the club was still open for lawn bowls , but the golf course has been closed for quite some time . Driving back to the park , we came up to a roundabout - a white car flashed it's lights and an arm came out the window waving us down - it was Phillip on his way back to where they were staying - he recognised the ute , even though he'd only seen it in photos - so we had an impromptu catch up , organising our day out tomorrow .

     Here's some views of Binningup Beach

  And the obligatory sunset shot .

   In the caravan park there's an interesting shed with murals all round - here's the 3 sides of it .

   Another view of the beach , the lookout is on the left and this is the track down to the beach .

   Binningup is a small coastal town - this photo shows nearly all of it .

  Another beach shot , with Bunbury in the distance .

   We caught up with Judith & Phillip and had lunch at the Crooked Carrot Cafe , well after about 4 hours of chatting , Phillip took us down to the farm he was working at , to show us the onion picker in action . It is pulled by the tractor on the rhs of the photo , the tractor on the lhs is towing a trailer that I could park our ute in !! While we were there , the trailers were filled at least 5 or 6 times - That's an amazing amount of onions . The process starts with the onions slashed to get rid of the greenery , another machine digs then out of the ground and leaves them in rows , then the picker comes along lifting them into the machine , processes them and puts them into the trailers via a conveyor - the machine can pick up 2 rows at a time - quite a piece of engineering . The crop to the left is potatoes . 

  And this is the end result , all the waste is covering the ground , and the onions are in the shed ! The surrounding area is used for vegetable crops - carrots , onions , potatoes , broccoli , and there's a lot of ground being used for these around the district .

   What a great day catching up with Judith & Phillip , broadening our horizons learning about onion harvesting , not to mention solving the problems of the world . Fortunately for us , they were staying just up the road from us , so us coming down to Binningup made life that little bit easier for the catchup .

  That's it for now , time to head off in another direction . Here's a map link :- https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1usMFw7kF4znCwvKOqpNGjeQybbnxjmam&usp=sharing