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Published: October 19th 2008
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Oct 11
Swan Valley
Spring in the Valley. What can we say; a wine festival. How lucky for us
Lots and lots of people, lots of wine tasting, lots of too much to drink. They have a lot of tour buses and lots of shuttle busses so you don’t drink & drive. We visited 4 wineries, 1 distillery and stopped at a craft market for lunch. Out of the wineries, Entopia was our favourite.
One place we saw 14 police, 2 horse mounted police, 2 motorcycle police, 2 bicycle police. Mostly young people on the prowl. Have to wonder how long this might last. Some of the wineries don’t take part in the festival.
Oct 12
Packed up and headed to Fremantle.
Good to be back in civilization again. While we really enjoyed the outback, we had had enough. GPS got us through Perth & Freemantle to our caravan park. Then we went to the Fremantle Market. Good look around and did a little bit of shopping. The rest of the day was pretty lazy.
Oct 13
Took the campervan in for a service. Took about 2 ½ hours. So we spent that time having breakfast and looking at
a bunch of shops. Nothing exciting. No issues at all with the van maintenance.
Spent a bunch of time on tours at the Fremantle jail. Built by convicts in 1855 and finally closed in 1991. Tour guides had awesome stories to tell. Nice place to visit, but….
Also went down to the harbour for a homemade lunch. Looking at ships being loaded and unloaded. One was a car transport, unloading Japanese cars. Interesting ship!!
Oct 14
To Busselton.
Peppermint Eco Caravan Park. Decided to stay in one of their studio apartments! A REAL bed for a change. The park is very quiet at the moment.
I think we can easily recommend this park as a place to stay. Except it is booked for Dec/Jan. School holidays.
Visited the Busselton Jetty. Almost 2km long. Actually 1.6 something. In need of repair and they are valiantly trying to get the money to fix it up properly. Need 24million!!
At the end of the jetty is an observatory that goes 8metres under the ocean. All sorts of coral, sponges, etc clinging to the jetty piers. And quite a number of different types of fish. A really, really interesting visit. And of course
we had to walk the 1.6km back to the van.
Oct 15
Busselton area.
Went to the Yallingup Shearing Shed this morning. Very good shearing and sheep dog demo. Lots of great info about the sheep ranch business. TIDBIT: Did you know that sheep have no upper teeth?
Sheep raised for their wool are mainly Merino. The Wood Shed has about 4000 sheep and they are sheared once a year, in December. The area keeps a couple of shearers busy year round by doing their shearing at different times of the year.
Had lunch at the Bootleg Brewery. I was actually surprised at the number of people there. Certainly not an easy place for us to find. Good food and certainly good beer. We didn’t do the beer tasting, just had a glass each. The roads in the area were pretty narrow, basically only one lane with gravel shoulders. Great scenery though. Lots of vineyards, sheep, and a few cattle. Lots and lots of trees line the roadway.
Shopping was the adventure of the afternoon as well as a short trip to the beach. Nice quiet beach and since there was no wind a very gentle swell to the
sea.
Another great day in OZ.
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Eryka
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Sheep, Sheep!!!!!!!
The sheep look so cuddly. I can't wait till you bring mine home. It will live in the yard and I promise to look after it. Grandma, I'll even give you the wool. Love Eryka