After leaving Denmark we headed off in a north westerly direction, aiming for a dairy farm stay just out of Brusselton. The roads we travelled were mainly surrounded by forest/National Parks/logging areas. As we approached Manjimup we saw the forest had been cleared to manicured paddocks, a lot of effort would have gone into this and building lake sized dams. We found the farm stays with no problems, before the days of Google maps it would have been very difficult. There is a big area for us to stay, close’ish to the owners house, there is only one other camper, all the way from Wheelers Hill. Down the hill is their dairy, we were able to visit at milking time and the boys were able to give a hand with feeding the baby cows.
Today we headed off exploring Brusselton, it’s a very nice seaside suburb, many houses with fantastic beach frontages. There is also private camp grounds that run for a few kms of beach front that are owned by a variety of religious denominations, the locals call it the “holley mile”.
The farm stay is the perfect position to leave the caravan and explore the surrounding areas (especially at $5 a van per night to camp). We travelled from Cape Naturaliste lighthouse, taking in Margaret River and the surrounding towns and the winery areas. We only stopped in at one winery; we were captured by the sign of chocolate infused port. I could have been heavily liquored if I let them, initially being offered generous samples of the white wines, then the reds (if I had of accepted) and then the Ports and Muscat’s. We did not know there are white ports, a lighter version of a Tawny Port. The chocolate port really smelt of chocolate. My favourite being the Artesian Muscat, it only takes 20 years to mature in the barrel! We then drove to southern most western point of WA, the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse. This lighthouse is the largest lighthouse in all of Australia. The Margaret River surfing classic was on at Prevally Beach, we ventured in, however the area was heavily populated with security and on lookers. We could have ventured in, however we saw it on TV over lunch in Margaret River and new we would never get to see so much from the beach. This was the first TV we have seen in 3 weeks!