On the coast at the south west tip of Australia, 300 km south of Perth. This pleasant small town overlooks the mouth of the Blackwater River. Unexpectedly, this is the third oldest settlement in the whole of Western Australia (after Albany and Perth). There’s a small local museum, the Augusta Historical Museum (www.amrshire.wa.gov.au/facilities/augusta-historical-museum), which has a few interesting bits and pieces.

But there are two much more interesting sights nearby. Some 10 km north-east of here is Jewel Cave, which is probably the most exciting of all the many caves in the region. This is renowned for its exquisite helictites. There is a two-hour tour, not for the faint-hearted.

The other point of interest is 10 km south of town: wild and windy Cape Leeuwin, the end of this end of Australia. South of here there’s nothing between you and the Antarctic 5,000 km away, though it can feel closer on a stormy winter’s day. And westwards, there’s nothing but 9,000 km of empty Indian Ocean between you and the Cape of Good Hope.

To experience these geographical niceties to the full, you can climb to the top of the lighthouse. Nearby there’s also an old waterwheel which is encrusted in salt.

Other intriguing facts: the Dutch were the first to put this stretch of coastline on the map in the early 17thC. The cape itself was named by a Dutch sea captain after his ship (‘Leeuwin’ means lioness in Dutch). It was from precisely this point in 1851 that Flinders began his mammoth task of mapping the coast of Australia. In 1989 a Perth-based American scientist tested his newly invented laser telescope here. Its beam curved with the surface of the earth so that he could see (and photograph) Antarctica. After patenting this amazing invention, and securing a large grant from the US military for its development, he went missing.