En route to Margaret River we stopped off at various places to see big old trees. We met this old forest ranger who was really freindly and was giving us tips on where to visit. We tried following his directions to the cape penninsula, but couldnt find this lighthouse he told us about - we think its one of the games he plays with stupid tourists ;) The highlight of our drive was this big old tree 100s of years old, and people used to park their cars in it.
Margaret River itself is a bit of a surfers paradise, and has been touted as “epic” by some famous surfer dude. So needless to say, we did no surfing, but made our first stop the fudge factory and tested a few weird flavours, buying peanut butter and original.
After this essential stop, we headed down to Preverly Beach to set up at the surfers camp, and then headed down to the beach to watch the dudes “hang ten” and do some totally bogus moves. The surf wasn’t really all that (we’d apparently missed the big swell by a day), but the kite surfers had no probs and showed off a few tricks. We had a nice walk along the beach, watched the sun set, and then headed to the pizzeria. It was a BYO, so Marc nipped to the offy next door, and was gone for about 15mins after the shop offered some free wine tastings on some of the local brews.
After a nice dinner, we finally created our first proper fire. It was going in minutes, and burned for hours. What made it all the better was the guy in the next site couldn’t get his going… ha ha
The next day we made the right decision that this camp site was a bit grotty, so we moved on to a nicer place. It was so nice that we ended up staying an extra night. This place was on the river, had really good facilities, and had loads of parrots and ducks, with the main star, Wally the kookaburra.
Ev got well acquainted with Wally, and fed him some steak when starting our wine tour. Yep, that’s right, Margaret River is one of the biggest wine regions in WA, and our new campsite did vineyard tours. The tour was started with an Aussie BBQ lunch, before heading on to the 3 vineyards, chocolate factory, cheese factory, venison farm, lavender vineyard, before ending up at the local brewery. So it was a pretty full tour, and lots of booze tastings. Redgate was first up, and we got 10 tastings here in about 20mins, so they all kind of merged into one. Evelyn discovered a taste for dessert wines and white port (i.e. the strong stuff ;). We got another 8 tastings at Xanado vineyard from some ponsey French waiter. Next was the venison farm, which isn’t really our thing (poor bambi)
The 3rd vineyard was the best, and the wine “master” made the experience very entertaining with his wit and passion for wine. He saw himself as a ladies man, and immediately took a liking to Aihling (one of the Irish sisters in the group). The wines here were really nice with the “Lost the Plot” brand being the favourite, but unfortunately because the vineyard is so small he doesn’t sell outside of Margaret river ;(
After getting a bit tipsy, the chocolate factory was a great next stop, and everyone got more than their fair share of freebies ;) and we liked the chocy so much, we went back the next day and got some more freebies ;) Next was the free cheese, and then a nice cup of lavender tea and lavender scones in the lavender garden, but not before sampling some lavender beer and wines!!! We were seeing things in shades of purple after this!!! Our conclusion, lavender is a nice fragrance and should stay that way ;) Lucky we had the brewery next up to get rid of the taste ;) We got a paddle of 4 beers, all of which were English ale style – not ideal, but strong content and better than lavender!!
When we started the tour, the mini bus was quite quiet, but by the end there was a bit more rowdiness. We ended the day by going for dinner with Aihling and Sinead (the Irish sisters) who were on our tour and camped next to us.
Next day we visited Bussleton which has the longest wooden jetty of 2km. There was a museum here which revisited all the tribulations of the jetty, as its almost been burnt down 3 times, and almost knocked over by a cyclone!! At the end of the pier, there is an under water observatory where you can see the fish swimming amongst the coral. It’s only 10mtrs deep here, so the brave can go snorkelling off the jetty, but the water was a bit cold.
On our way back we stopped off for chocy and cheese, before doing a mini kayak up the river. Unfortunately, the river was blocked off into sections, to keep the marron (a local type of crayfish) in, so we could only go so far…
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