While in Fremantle, we took a short, 3-night “holiday within a holiday” to Margaret River, Western Australia’s wine capital. Despite five previous visits to Fremantle, we had somehow never managed to reach Margaret River before, despite it being only a three hour drive away. That omission was finally corrected on this trip.
Armed with lots of advice (mostly winery recommendations!) we set off on a Monday morning and headed south. It’s always a surprise at how little variation in scenery there is on drives through Australia, rather like a road trip across Canada’s prairie provinces. Lots of gum trees interspersed with bucolic fields of crops and farm animals grazing. But then every now and again between the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, we’d get a definite reminder that we were in Australia when we spotted a field of full of kangaroos, or wild emus.
Our first stop after lunch in Bunbury, was, naturally, at a winery. Happ’s amazed us by having over 40 varieties of wine produced on site. We found a wide range of wines to be true of other wineries that we visited on the next day’s tour too. All but a handful of Margaret River’s 150 or so wineries are boutique operations, so experimentation with small batches is a common thread. A tapas dinner at Swings and Roundabouts, the restaurant operation of a winery, completed our first day.
The next morning was cool and rainy, so breakfast on the patio of the Margaret River Bakery was a bit chilly. The weather certainly didn’t detract from the great food quality though! We then opted for an indoor activity (sort of) with a tour of one of the caves of the region. In addition to the usual stalactites and stalagmites, the Mammoth Cave boasted an underground river, the jawbone of an extinct mammoth marsupial (Zygomaturus trilobus), and ended with a nature trail loaded with wildflowers and orchids. For lunch, we took a short drive up to Margaret River’s oldest winery, Vasse Felix. Their tasting menu was an imaginative and delicious, 6-course affair that spanned more than two hours. All paired with their wines too. The weather had cleared, so we drove out to the ocean and walked around Surfers Point and the sandy mouth of the Margaret River. Needless to say, after a 6-course luncheon that lasted until well after 3:00 pm a big dinner was not needed, so wine and cheese were enough.
Another big breakfast at the bakery set us up for our winery tour the next day. A knowledgeable driver-guide was an essential as 11 of us were driven to three different wineries, sampling six or even eight wines at each stop; sparklings, whites, reds, and rosés. Hard to believe that there were still over 140 wineries in the region still to visit! After our tour ended at a chocolate shop in Cowaramup, a walk definitely seemed like a good plan and so we did a short loop around the original Margaret River Homestead, crossing the and recrossing the river en route. A Thai meal ended off the day.
Our departure day was pretty low key, A leisurely breakfast at the bakery, then a drive out Caves Road to the Ellensbrook Homestead, family home of some of the colonial settlers of the area. A drive down to the nearby surfing beach and some whale watching completed our exploration of the Margaret River area. (The whales were 1-2 km offshore and only the occasional blow or splash from a breach could be seen. Our one photo of a whale spouting was just a fuzzy white dot at high zoom and has not been included in the images!).
We did manage to catch some close-up photos of kangaroos on our drive home (see feature image above), but they were part of a KangaART installation at a Miami Bakehouse gas stop. A nice safe way to get close to a kangaroo, as they are notorious for leaping out in front of vehicles in rural areas, especially at night.
A photo album of our Margaret River trip, www.flickr.com/photos/100countries/albums/72177720321567115/
