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Published: December 5th 2005
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Pencil shavings, baked bread, plums, vanilla, chocolate……. These are just a few of the aromas and taste notes to be found in the amazing wines we tried on our ‘Wine for Dudes’ tour in the Margaret River wine region! What a brilliant time we had. Although, in fairness, since we left Perth in Tony the Toyota last Friday, we’ve been having a ball from sunrise to sunset each and every day. So - here’s what we’ve been up to………
Firstly, to get your bearings, think of a map of Aus. We are currently situated on the bottom left hand corner, south of Perth, and we’re heading downwards in a loop, hugging the coast before heading off to the right for about 800kms. Next we scoot back up in a loop to the left (via the goldfields in the outback) and onwards to Perth. This trip is taking us about two weeks with 5 main stopovers.
Our first port of call - to break the journey to Margaret River, was in a small coastal town called Busselton, which has a wonderful old jetty that’s the longest in the Southern hemisphere at 2kms. The mainly wooden (and at times pretty dodgy)
structure stretches far out into amazing translucent turquoise waters, and at the end there’s a 12 meter deep observation chamber which you can visit to see the fish and coral that live underwater on the old piles that support the weight of the jetty. The pier has been damaged significantly on a number of occasions by fire and weather, and at the moment the end part is broken off where fire occurred about 7 yrs ago. Typically, this was caused by someone dropping a fag end! It’s a gorgeous walk - a bit on the windy side - but just lovely to be so far out on the ocean, while still connected to dry land.
The drive down to Margaret River (known locally as Margs) was really nice. There are hardly any cars on the roads which makes the journey leisurely and relaxing - that is until you have to negotiate the overtake of a huge road train - but more about those later…. We had 4 nights in Margs, spending our time diching around between beaches and headlands, watching surfers, doing some fishing off the beaches and piers, bike riding (free bike hire at the YHA we were
The Wine Dudes
These are the guys we met on our tour. Note that we are the small unhealthy looking ones to the right of the big tanned Aussies! staying at) and visiting points of interest around the coast. It’s really amazing - such an outstanding way to spend time. This place is so chilled out - everyone is SO friendly, there’s lots of dudes walking around in their bare feet - even to the supermarket / pub, and there are the coolest classic cars from the seventies & beyond in wonderful colours with big shiny alloys and NO RUST! Its no wonder that people are so ‘horizontal’ though, as the scenery is magnificent. This whole area is part of the Leeuwin National park, and no matter where you drive, you will pass through lush forests, striped vineyards, scraggy bush, pale yellow wheatfields and fresh pastures. Wildlife is unbelievable too. You don’t get sparrows here - you get parrots, and lorikeets! It’s the strangest thing to encounter parrots sitting on a telephone wire instead of blackbirds or pigeons. And we really didn’t expect to see so many Kangaroos, but WA is teeming with them. You actually need to be very careful of them bouncing out onto the road as you drive along, as that tends to happen a fair bit, and most cars and trucks have ‘’roo bars’’ to
protect them from this. I’ve lost count of the number of swerve marks on the tarmac. Other roadside points of interest are massive red anthills, and stunning wildflowers such as white ‘cala’ type lilies, and the occasional bare bush with hundreds of bright purple daisy-ish blooms growing on every branch.
The day we spent doing the wine tour was great - and we met a bunch of good folk who joined us for the day. It was called ‘’Wine for Dudes’’ and cost about 20 pounds each to visit 4 / 5 wineries, tasting as we went along, and we even got the chance to mix our own wines. Delish. We did a tour 3 yrs ago in San Francisco visiting wineries in Sonoma valley, however the Margaret River tour was infinitely better. The girl who ran our trip was called Cathy and she really knew her stuff. Seemed that she had wine in her blood, having a sister who was a professional wine mixer for some of the local wine labels. Vinyards we visited included Pilandry, Juniper and Madfish. You might recognise Madfish from the UK - we’ve definitely seen it for sale there, maybe in Sainsbury’s or
Tesco?. Our fav was the Juniper tasting - and for the first time we tried white port. It’s a bit like dessert wine - a touch sweet, but very easy on the palate. I feel a purchase coming on! The other folk on our tour included a bunch of university students who had just graduated and were spending some time relaxing just north of Margs - a place called Yallingup - on a vineyard owned by one of their parents. They were a lovely bunch and invited us, and a great girl called Helen from London, back with them for cricket, beers and Spag bog. We had a great time - although during a period of vigorous fielding, we were perturbed to get a warning form one of the girls about watching out for snakes lurking in the grass. She wasn’t joking. Cripes!
Anyway - as usual we’ve taken a zillion photos - hope you enjoy!
Next blog coming soon - it’s about Albany and it might creep you a bit as we’ve some gruesome tales from the whaling station museum we visited!!!!!
Alan & Shaz. xxxxxx (Note: we’ve done away with the Bushman and Shelia malarkey
- it was turning into a pain in the ass.)
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anonymous
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Dont have spiders that big over here in NZ - Only big beer jugs!!!! see you in NZ soon. Ian and Liz