Margaret River for Vines and Wines (Australia)

After Cable Beach, we “went to Perth”.  I say that because Perth is one of Australia’s largest cities, so by mentioning it, you may get an idea of our whereabouts (south west, think San Diego placement, but San Francisco weather or maybe even colder); but we really did not visit Perth.  We flew into the Perth airport in the evening.  Jared did a bit of math and realized that the shuttle to and from the airport and our hostel would be kind of expensive, so he suggested we just sleep in the airport.  We had to pick up a rental car from the airport the next morning, so we opted to do that instead of pay the extra amount.  Also, airports are one of the few places where wifi is almost guaranteed, so we were able to pick up some internet, which I used to finalize some of our last minute Australia stuff.  We set up shop in the international terminal for the night, which was, surprisingly, a pretty popular decision among other people as well.  That night’s sleep was so-so, as to be expected, but the next morning we got up alright and got ready to head out.

I will mention here that I cannot stand it when a car rental company advertises themselves as being at the airport, you know one of the desks you can walk up to in the baggage terminal and then walk over to the parking lot and pick up your car, when they are in fact NOT located at the airport, but instead somewhat “close” to the airport necessitating some type of shuttle to pick you up and take you to the company hub; it drives me bananas.  At least, by the next morning I was aware that I needed to arrange this shuttle, but still, what if I didn’t have a phone to call them!?  Anyway, the shuttle came and picked us up and we got our rental car arranged.  Awhile back, when initially planning everything, we were actually discussing leaving Perth out of the itinerary entirely due to our time shortage, but I decided we could squeeze in a few days, and we both decided to focus entirely on a small town about 3 hours south of Perth along the water called Margaret River, more famous as one of Australia’s prominent wine districts.  The drive was short, but a bit excruciating, because I was sooooooo tired, and again, I am the only one who can drive, ug.  Anyway, we finally arrived in the cute little town of Margaret River.  First things first, the information center to figure out our tourist options, of which there was a surprising amount for such a small town.  We also hit up the grocery store.  As I was the driver and Jared the navigator, he basically planned and directed me where to go the entire time, which is kind of how I like it right now; I did about 95% of the planning and booking for Australia, so when we have an opportunity for me not to plan our activities, I revel in it.  First stop, nature.  Apparently, Margaret River is a biodiversity hub on par with the Amazon, and we had just come into wildflower season!  Jared planned out a few hikes through notable regions.  We didn’t exactly know what we were looking for or looking at, so I kind of tried to think of it all as very rare and exotic, ooh ahh…but how knows.  Either way, it was nice to look at!  On one walk, we made it out to a whale watching lookout, and despite not actually seeing one break up through the water in a huge whale leap, we did see a lot of blowhole mists and little bits of whale parts, so…I guess it’s kind of the same thing, right?  Yea, we didn’t think so either.  Anyway, as the day wore on, we made it to a great lookout just in time for sunset.  Now, remember the advice of the first car rental company about driving at dusk and dawn?  Well, we had our first encounter with a kangaroo that dusk.  It was driving through the very narrow dirty roads lined by bush (as in The Australian Bush), when out of nowhere a huge kangaroo came bounding out at the car.  I swerved and barely missed it, which was a bit scary, but kind of awesome because I hadn’t seen a kangaroo in the wild yet!  So I got to tick that off my box!  A bit after dark, we pulled in to make our dinners at a small lookout before driving a bit more to the town of Gracetown, where we pulled in to a boat inlet parking lot and spent the night sleeping in the car.

Needless to say, never the best sleep in a car, but the next morning, we found some good bathrooms along the beach and had a bit of a wash up before heading back to Margaret River’s town center.  That day, we decided to focus on wineries.  We drove south to Augusta and the Cape Leewin Lighthouse at the point of the Cape.  Unfortunately, the lighthouse charged admission just to even be able to walk to the point, which was lame, so we opted out.  We attempted to find a few more spots along the way with the mysterious wild flowers that we could not really identify, and eventually gave up to focus on our booze.  We went to a total of five wineries that day, Red Gate, Cape Mentelle, Voyager Estate (with Jared’s favorite Cabernet Sauvignon), Xanadu, and McHenry Hohnen.  The Margaret River region is mostly known for their Chardonnay, of which neither Jared nor I are big fans, and their Cabernet Sauvignon, of which Jared is a really big fan.  Ever since Jared traveled to Italy several months ago, he has developed an appreciation for wine (and olives), with a heavy preference for red, so he was very much enjoying the tasting…also he wasn’t driving haha  After our fill of red wine, we headed back to Margaret River’s town center.  We stopped again at the grocery store and found some really cheap pork mince for dinner.  There was a nice park with a picnic area, including a really nice and clean BBQ facility, so we were able to cook up the mince and have a hot dinner.  We again slept in the car that night, always in an attempt to skim a few dollars off of our expenditure. 

The next day was our last in the Perth region, but we weren’t flying out until the evening, so we woke up early and went for a nice nature walk through the park where we head spent the night.   Then we headed into town a bit to stop by the local farmer’s market, which was great because they had a massive amount of free food in the form of samples, so we took full advantage of everything!  That was basically enough for our lunches and when we had exhausted our free food allotment at each stall, we packed up and leisurely made our way back to Perth, stopping off at a cheese factory (with free cheese samples).  We got back to the car rental company in plenty of time, thankfully, because whenever we “live” in a car, it’s like our backpacks actually exploded all over the back seats and junk is everywhere, so we have a bit of rearranging and packing before we were ready to go.  Our next stop was one that Jared was pretty darn excited about!