Blogs from Margaret River, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania

Wednesday ended with a trip to too more wineries this time with paid for tastings. This region is famous for its Chardonnay's and Cab Sauv. The Voyager estate was particularly inpressive with lovely gardens and an impressive tasting room. I managed to sneak into anothe place at 16:55 (5 minutes before closing) but they were happy to let me stay on and taste a few.... I ended up buyting a bottle..... In appreciation and instead of paying the tasting fee of $10 . A nice way to end an exhilerating and tiring day. (I'm passing over a distinctly average dinner that night).... read more

After the Lighthouse at Cape Leeuwin, I worked my way up the Southern half of Caves Road which is very scenic 120 kms drive in all, with amazingly varied landscapes and fauna. The vegetaion changes every few kms. Heathland here, massive trees trees creating sun dappled avenues there, and then the many vinyards. All delightful on a glorious sunny day as it was. But my main focus was on the caves. There are 120 in all along this coast but I managed two of the larger more popular examples. Jewel cave first with a series of the massive chambers, each with many marvellous calcite foramtions. I'll spare you a geology lesson, but the limestones is very young in geological terms (1.5 million years). That's still enough time for the caves to be created by water dissoving ... read more

R: So this is our penultimate post about this summer's trip. We arrived about 6pm into Margaret River into a really amazing AirBnb right in the centre of town. It was two bedrooms, two bathrooms, is very smart and the host had thought of everything. We were planning on doing very little that evening, and our friends Gareth and Fi had already visited the large supermarket over the road and picked up ingredients for Fajitas. They had just come across from Sydney but had had a day in Fremantle to get used to Western Australia (WA). After a bit of a catch up, Dave had organised some impromptu drinks in the Settler's Tavern in town that evening, so we headed down and realised it was even colder in Margaret River than it was in Perth. It ... read more

We were very impressed by the Stay Hotel in Margaret River, that was the Quality Inn until two days ago. Very clean and friendly, but what surprised us most was the detail at which the room was presented. Every little bit of comfort, like slippers and plenty of toiletries, FREE mini bar including two beer, six soft drinks, two OJs, jelly beans, chocolate bars, bottled water, nuts, crackers, and off course free coffee and tea. In the morning, we spent a lot of time shopping here, some of "us" like that. We still wanted the fish and chip we missed out on last night, so on our way out of town we stopped in again at the Sea Garden Café for lunch, Ferdy had the shark and Marion the hake. Very nice indeed. Although we took ... read more

We left Bali during the middle of yet another 'celebration'. There appears to be one more or less every day. This day was a celebration of all things metal! I know! Apparently it was a day to be thankful for all thins metal which were of service to our lives. Cars, scooters et were emblazoned with beautiful leaf offerings. I was informed by a local that one should also dig out guns or weapons and dress them up too! So on to Denpasar Airport. Strangely, we had been unable to print out our boarding passes. The document we received mentioned something about a 'document check'. On arrival at the check in counter, we were met by a charming young lady who asked us if we had a visa to visit Australia! 'Visa? Certainly not! We don't ... read more