When having your own car can be a right pain in the

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I'm in an area that has hundreds of vineyards. There are signs for winery after winery, free tastings at each, yet I can't partake. Why? Because they only way to navigate around these wineries is to drive. There are no public buses in the area, and the only way to do the wine tastings when you're a solo traveller is to take one of the 'competitively priced' tours. I signed myself up for one as I'm not coming all the way down here without supping what the area has to offer, but it's blown my budget out of the water! Still, all that red wine is bound to be worth it....

I picked up the bottles of wine for Lindsey and Bret at the Cape Naturaliste vineyard, to the north of the region, and then headed to the west of Dunsborough to Eagle Bay, Bunker Bay and to the Cape Naturaliste lighthouse. The beaches and the coastline here are out of this world. The most stunning white sand and blue sea, and pretty much deserted but for a couple of people. This, in 35 degree sunshine! It reminded me again of the beaches just north of Mandurah that I visited when last over here and just brought a massive smile to my face. I'll probably come back here on Thursday on my way home.

Driving back to Margaret River, I drove down Caves Road, where many of the vineyards are located. Given my abstinence today, there was only one thing for it - to find the olive, cheese and chocolate tasting sites. First stop, the Natural Olive Company, where I tasted about 50 things, from olives, to olive oils infused with lemon, orange, ginger etc, to pestos (the macadamia one clearly won the day), chilli balsamics, feta cheeses. I stayed for an hour - backpacking means that this is called 'lunch'. Of course any good lunch needs dessert...so chocolate tasting was next at the Margaret River Chocolate Company. Disappointingly only 3 varieties of chocolate on offer here for free, so I just had to take handfuls rather than teaspoonfuls instead. Cheese to finish, at the Margaret River Dairy Company, where I tried everything from Emmental to double cream Camembert. Delicious.

By now I was practically rolling in and out of the i20. I probably should have checked the tyre pressures given the additional weight being lugged around. Still, I headed off to Prevelly, scene of the devastating bushfires of last week. The roads have just been reopened today to protect the locals from gawping tourists. I admittedly appeared to be falling into that category however was travelling there with an alternative purpose. I had heard of a backpackers down there that was meant to be superb - better than the place I'm staying at. Much as my current place is convenient, it is a) full of long termers who have their own cliques, cooking dinner for each other etc and hogging the full kitchen and lounge areas, b) my roomies are nice but they don't talk much, so it's costing me a fortune in downloading TV series to watch (again, no chance of using the remote in the long termers' lounge), and c) my bed is crawling with ants. To the final point, my roomies told me (on the rare occasion that they speak) this was normal - the rooms hadn't been deep cleaned for ages so much as it's not nice, it was no surprise either. They told me to grin and bear it. I passed on the grinning bit in case one of the little creatures decided to take a stroll into my mouth, but bear it I did last night and tonight. Maybe Prevelly holds better hope for tomorrow night.

Wrong. The devastation was worse than it looked on the telly. Driving down Caves Road towards the town, you could already see areas where the bushfire had taken hold. Trees burned to the ground, with the smell of bonfires lingering all around. The scene in Prevelly was worse. I drove to the beach past rows of houses where some had survived and others had literally melted away. Vehicles that used to be 4x4s of some sort parked in the driveways were just burned out shells. Forests of trees were now just singed bark. Roadsigns had totally melted away. The view back from the beach was just horrendous - I can only describe it as resembling the elephants' graveyard in The Lion King. Truly horrendous.

The gawpers were out in force, in particular a red car full of German girls who insisted on braking and snapping pictures out the window of their car every five minutes. A total lack of respect for people's privacy when they're happily snapping photos of what used to be someone's home and life.

I moved on, back to Margaret River, and decided on an early night with the ants. The wine tour's tomorrow - I need to be in fine form for that! So now, in true movie-night-in style, I'm sitting here, about to watch Luther, series 1 episodes 2 and 3, minus the popcorn (the ants don't need any further encouragement)...

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