18^th September: Margaret River

Richard's birthday today. He is 41. As it is the second last day of term, I think he will be too exhausted to celebrate. Probably has still work to do!

We packed up and came to Margaret River, an easy trip to the centre of the wine growing area here. In fact, we had to waste some time so that we didn't get here before 10.00 am. Fortunately, there were road works which held us up along the way!! First time I have been glad to stop for road works.

We set up camp and were ready to play the tourist. (However, we didn't set off for a while!) We went up to Cowaramup or Cow Town as it is often called. They have black and white cows (statues) all over the place and much of their shops are based on cows. (There are many dairy farms here – green, green fields dotted with black and white cows, dozens and dozens of them!!) There is a gift shop called Mukau (say it aloud!) 

 

A Ring Neck Parrot.  They are fairly common.

We wine tasted in a wine centre but they had a selection of 3 whites and 3 reds. We couldn't select although they had over 600 wines! So we toddled off to the wineries. The first was Mad Fish which I have often seen in cellars and I wanted to taste it for future reference. But we bought 2 Cab Sauvs that you cannot buy in bottle shops. Very nice they were too! Mad Fish is the cheapest line from this winery (Howard Park) and they were still not cheap or nasty. We didn't taste any others as they were 50+ a bottle. Probably very good!!

Then we went bush bashing to Cape Grace (purely because of the name!) They only sold to public from the cellar door as they are very small. They were also very expensive and so we only bought 1 bottle.

After this we went up to Cape Naturaliste where there was a lighthouse. It cost $4 to walk around the base and $14 to climb to the top. So we gave that a miss and went out to Sugar Loaf Rock where we had decided to watch the sunset and drink a bubbly. As you can see from the photos, it is a spectacular place but very windy and Glen was very cold. No coat and so he wrapped himself up in a picnic rug. An asian guy with a camera thought he was very funny and took 3 photos!

 

Of course, it was dark when we came home and we became lost when we missed a turn. When I saw a road that we had passed earlier, I knew we were going around in circles. But we did eventually get home but it was late.