Margaret River Tour
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Tue 10 Feb 2015 12:12
The first stop after a long drive, was the Bussleton Jetty, or Busso, if you live here. Getting around and reading maps is quite tricky in Oz. Some of the aboriginal place names are so long and complicated that they take ages to read and are impossible to pronounce, so understandably they have been shortened. However, this has its own problems, as the shortened place names that are generally used here never appear on the map, and directions from locals can be hard to follow! When you drive along, if you are trying to read the signs, you sometimes need to slow down so you can get to the bottom of the list to find the place you are supposed to be heading to!
Busso is famous for its wooden jetty and that is what we were stopping to see - yes you heard right, a jetty! Now this is not just any old jetty, it is the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere, so now you know. It looks just like any other jetty, just a whole lot longer, about 1.8km long. If this is their idea of a sightseeing trip, it might be a long day!
It's a long wooden jetty - but a beautiful beach as well!
The next stop off was a lot more promising, a brewery. Bootleg brewery is one of the oldest breweries in the Margaret River. Lunch was provided, a sampler platter of local hams, charcuterie, cheeses, breads etc along with a tasting of their most popular beers and cider.
The other thing we have noticed about Aussies is that they have a thing about eating kangaroo. Now, we both like kangaroo and a particular favourite of ours is kanga bangas, I kid you not. Delicious, almost fat free, healthy sausages. You can also get fillets, loins etc. I think the Aussies view the thought of eating kangaroo like we would the thought of eating horses. Whilst the French are happy to tuck in, it obviously never took off in England. Hardly anyone else ate the kangaroo and emu chorizo - a terrible waste, it was delicious!j
What a fab place for a brewery?
Having been fortified by beer and food, wine tasting was next. The wines here are generally very good and they are able to grow a lot wider variety of grapes than, for example, the Hunter Valley. The white wine here is pretty tasty, mostly a Sauvignon blanc or Sauvignon blanc Semillion mix. The Reds are also not bad, although we definitely prefer the big, full bodied Shirazs to the Merlots, they are a bit too earthy for our taste.
The winery we went to was a bit disappointing, we have had a lot of good wines from this area while travelling around, and these just weren't as good. Tomorrow we are doing more tastings though with a specialist guide so they might be better.
In the afternoon, the whistle stop tour continued, with a trip to Mammoth Cave, a baby at only 1 million years old, compared to the caves in the Kimberley, far north of here, which are over 300 million years old. None-the-less, some nice, old, calcified stuff to look at, some of which weren't even part of our tour group!
Stalactites and stalagmites
The itinerary said we would next be awestruck by some huge karri trees before heading to most south-westerly part of Australia to see where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean at Cape Leeuwin. OK, the trees were fairly tall and we pretended to be struck by awe!!
Awe inspiring trees!
The Dutch named Cape Leeuwin long before the English arrived here, however they were in such a rush to get home, they didn't bother to see what the Cape was actually attached to and missed out on the discovery of a whole continent - oops! The Aussies could have been Dutch speaking if the explorers hadn't have been so impatient!!
Where the two oceans meet
We then had an overnight stop at a resort in Busso before starting again with a gourmet tour the next day, with wine tastings, beer tastings, nasty nougat inspired liqueur tastings, as well as chocolate and cheese tastings. We were so full after all the day out that we declined dinner on the way home in favour of a beach walk, whilst the rest of the group ate, and we just rolled into bed when we arrived back in Perth about 10.30 at night!
Gorgeous vineyard but slightly smoke hazed! We had woken up to a huge amount of smoke in our hotel as the wind had changed direction over night. The fires were actually about 70km away.
John was trying to decide which he liked best
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