Hello people,

We left Perth last Wednesday with another Easy Rider tour, this time heading for the South West. The morning of our first day was quite rainy and we didn't really stop anywhere for long, although we did pass through Busselton which apparently has the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere (just under 2 kilometres). We went into this cool cave in the afternoon called Ngilgi cave, which went to a depth of 37 metres. We also went to this place called Canal Rocks, where the sea surged through this narrow canal that had been cut through the rocks.

We arrived in Margaret River that evening, where we stayed for 3 days. The Margaret River region is a very prosperous vinyard region with approximately 100 different wineries there, plus some breweries, a couple of dairy factories and a chocolate factory. On our first day we went on a wine tasting tour, where we visited 5 different family run wineries and tried between 6 and 10 wines each time. Learnt quite alot about wine that we didn't know before, although i'll probably want to stick to my tried and tested formula for choosing wine, strong and cheap. We also went to the chocolate factory, which Toni was very disappointed with cos there wasn't a huge selection of different types of chocolate for us to try, which is what she was expecting, the choice was a bowl full of milk chocolate buttons or a bowl full of dark chocolate buttons. Next day we hired a scooter and went for a drive around stopping at the dairy factories, where we tried a selection of different cheeses (and some yoghurt). We also passed a venison farm, ended up getting lost a little and driving past a field full of Kangaroos. I asked someone why there was a Kangaroo farm there and he looked at me like i was a wierdo, they were all wild, so we stood and looked at them for a while. Next day we walked to an eagle heritage place that looks after lots of ill or injured birds of prey with the hope of releasing them back into the wild. Lots of birds with big beaks and claws, quite cool.

Yesterday we got back on the bus and drove further down south. We went to the most southwesterly point of Australia, a place called Augusta, where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet. Then we went driving through these massive forests full of Karri trees and Tingle trees, basically very tall and massive trees. Back in ye olde days they used to pick particularly tall trees and use them as lookouts for bushfires and stuff. They used to hammer iron sticks into the trunk in a spiral fashion up the trunk to the top so they could climb it to look out. There's one of these still around, called the Gloucester tree, and we visited that and climbed it (61 metres tall we were). We visited this place called the Valley of the Giants, which is basically a walkway that climbs up to the top of the trees so you can walk around looking down from the roof of the forest, it swayed quite alot.

Today we had a long drive although we did visit the south coastline which has lots of massive cliffs and rock formations called the 'Natural Bridge', basically a whole in some rock which looks like a bridge, and 'the Gap', basically a gap in the cliff. We did a bit more wine tasting today too. Got back to Perth quite late this evening so a bit tired. We're off the visit Scarborough either tomorrow or the next day, don't worry it's only 10 minutes down the road. We'll tell you all about it next time.

Stay out of trouble everyone,

Krys and Toni, xx