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Our guest speaker was the charming and ever-smiling Margaret Buswell, the director of Villa Carlotta and also a director of Cinefest-OZ. Villa Carlotta has been a family-owned company for 33 years and Margaret entered the business when she was 23 (she even awarded a small prize to Ron for correctly guessing her age). Margaret’s parents bought the Villa Carlotta Hotel and in 1985 began connecting people from the Australind train in Bunbury to Busselton, offering them wonderful accommodation, food and warm hospitality. Margaret and her husband Troy bought the business and rapidly expanded from a mini bus to a 42-seater coach, with tours ranging from the south-west to all over WA and Australia, and eventually overseas. The business today is still part-owned by Margaret and managing director Matt Walker. Margaret still occasionally escorts tours, which she loves doing, but mainly acts in an advisory and accounting capacity. Villa Carlotta tours offers different levels of participation, marked by numbers of feet signifying the amount of activity required. One foot equals a relaxed tour, followed by two for moderate, three for active, four for highly action and five for challenging. Villa’s tours are inclusive of fares, accommodation, meals and sightseeing trips. A driver picks up Villa passengers from their home and conveys them to whatever is the mode of transport, be it bus, train or flight terminal. An experienced and knowledgeable tour guide is provided with each tour for the entire duration and after your holiday, in a really nice and appreciated finishing touch, you are given a loaf of bread and carton of milk when your driver drops you home again. Margaret said some of the most satisfying tours are for solo travellers, who make new friends on their holidays. She knows of three couples who have married after meeting on a Villa Carlotta tour so people get to know each other very well indeed! In our talk she focused on a Villa Carlotta trip which they do six times a year to Norfolk Island. The island has a most interesting history starting in 1788 when it was settled as a penal colony. In 1814 the British left, razing all the buildings in case the French had any ideas of settling there. The British came back in 1853 and rebuilt but again abandoned the island. Meanwhile, the HMS Bounty mutineers who had settled on Pitcairn Island had run out of food and supplies and petitioned Queen Victoria to move to Norfolk Island with their Tahitian womenfolk. In 1856 193 men and women started living on the island and today the people are mostly their descendants. They have their own language, which is a mash up of Old English and Tahitian. Villa conducts a nine-day tour of Norfolk Island with one night spent in Sydney or Brisbane, depending on flight fares, then it’s a short two-and-a-half hour flight to Norfolk Island, taking in two time changes. The island is only 8km x 5km and in the time Villa travellers are there, they will travel all the available roads. It is a sub tropical and beautiful place, with rugged cliffs. As there is so much to see and so much history, it appeals to young and old. One interesting aspect is the free-ranging cows who are registered individuals, with fences built to keep them out of properties rather than in. Activities include a breakfast bush walk to see plaques erected to honour Captain James Cook when he landed on the island in 1774 and 1788, celebrating the women of Norfolk, including one who became a freed convict and had 11 children, in turn leading to one of the biggest pioneer families in Australia, the Wonderland by Night tour where descendants of the Pitcairn mutineers tell stories, a marine boat tour, a progressive dinner by residents, the Pitcairn settlers restoration village, cyclorama, fish fry up, paddock to plate dishes and a tour of Government House. In one of the questions to Margaret after her talk, Kenn asked how the tour leaders connected the solo travellers, and Margaret explained it was the leader’s job to ensure no-one was left out and after dinner at night, there was entertainment or cards so that people didn’t just return to their rooms on their own. Margaret was an absolute delight and we were so lucky to have her as our speaker as she lives in Port Geographe and travelled to Perth for our Rotary Breakfast meeting. 'Winners are grinners' Margaret presenting her raffle prize to winner Chris Dawson' Margaret commented on our 'beautiful location' where we meet every Tuesday morning |
