Namaste Travelling!: Australia (West) - Margeret River and the South West

We arrived in Margaret River at ten to five in the evening. Just enough time to go to the visitor centre and book accommodation and a wine tour for the following day before the lady behind the desk, as she kept reminding us, would be herself going home to enjoy a large glass of wine. The Home stay we chose was a lovely old farm set a little out of town. They owned 100 acres of bush land out the back so we were able to go for a couple of walks. The first evening we got there we saw about 100 kangaroos in back field…there were so many that we had assumed they were farmed there but when we asked they said they were all wild!

Our red faced wine guide
was excellent

The next morning we were collected from the farm by our tour guide. He was, like most wine buffs, very entertaining and very red faced. We had spent at least ten minutes deciding from the promotion leaflets which wine tour to pick, we didn’t want a ridiculously expensive one but we also really didn’t want one that was full of young backpackers who weren’t going to take it seriously or be taken seriously. Subsequently we were delighted when we climbed onto the bus to see four well dressed middle aged (mostly retired) couples smiling back. Their hearts probably sank when they saw us but I think our English accents made up for it. Several of them had all spent time living in some of the nicest parts of England and had fond memories. We visited 5 vineyards in total, with an average of 10-14 wine tastings at each.

The vineyards were often spectacular

We also visited a cheese, a chocolate, a venison and an olive oil factory and finished the day with a brewery! We ate lunch at the third vineyard which was a lovely Manor house and with our large glass of wine we had an exquisite but rather small fillet of gourmet fish and some fresh bread with dipping oil. As you can imagine as the day progressed we all became better and better friends and we finished the tour promising one couple that we’d visit their son in Melbourne and everyone else that, as they were so insistent upon it, we would make every effort to come back and work in Australia!!

Hundreds of types of chocolate

Olive oil tasting

The huge 60m trees - see the platform
1/2 way up and the hut
at the top!

The day after the wine tour we headed further south to the Valley of the Giants and spent the morning trekking through a forest of huge gum trees. In the forest there is one famous tree called the ‘Bicentennial Tree’ that has had big metal spokes drilled into it spiraling up to the top 60m above ground. The spokes enable people to climb up to the lookout hut at the top of the tree as it sways in the wind (!) Tourists obviously climb at their own risk and with only a fine mesh preventing falls, Mike and I didn’t make it more than half way up but it was very cool to see. Although quite a popular walk we didn’t see another person from start to finish and we were able to enjoy the beautiful forest all to ourselvesJ Having made the detour down to the forest we started making our way back to Perth for one night in the city before our flight to Darwin the next morning.