Margaret River - April 11th-13th 2008

Now that we're in full time employment, at least temporarily, we've decided that we need to make the most of our weekends by going out to see the sights that the local area has to offer.However, this being Australia, the 'local area' encompasses a good few hours driving, so we've decided to see a bit each weekend when we can.

Our first jaunt was down to Margaret River, about 280km south from Perth.Me, Dave, Caroline and Flemming squeezed into Steve's Hyundai Getz and headed off after Dave finished work on Friday.We had sandwiches and juice ready, a tank full of petrol, and a YHA hostel booking for two nights - we were looking forward to a bit of a road trip.

The trip down to Margaret River went smoothly, and we were reminded again that the Australian version of 'busy' is very different to our own - colleagues at work had advised me not to travel this weekend (as the schools have just broken up for easter), predicting that the traffic would be terrible... but we had to bear in mind that these are the same people who refer to a beach as being packed if there are ten people on it.Aside from a few traffic light queues early on in the journey, we more or less had the roads to ourselves once we'd left the outskirts of Perth.

Dave and I were a bit disappointed to see that Margaret River itself was nothing remarkable, just a small river running under a road bridge in the town.However, once we'd rested for the night in the comfortable hostel, we were ready to get exploring this popular tourist spot.

Our first stop was the Jewel Caves, so named because of the beautiful calcite formations inside.The main cave was about 30 metres tall and wide, with several winding passages leading to other parts of the cave complex.The stalagtites and stalagmites were beautiful, and accompanied by heligtites (instead of up or down, they come out sideways) and shawls (curtain like waves of multi coloured calcite - my favourite being the Bacon Shawl, which funnily enough looked just like a rasher of bacon).We managed to avoid banging our heads and emerged blinking into the sunshine an hour later, agreeing that the $19 entrance fee had been worthwhile.

We hopped back in the car and drove north, back towards the town of Margaret River, looking out for Caroline and Flemming on the way, as they'd gone for a walk, having already been to the Jewel Caves on a previous trip.We managed to track them down, and then we all headed to the nearest beach, planning a walk along the sand.To our surprise, there were dark, dining table like shapes floating up and down the shoreline - it took us a minute to work it out, but then we realised they were stingrays!They seemed to be very tame, coming close enough to pet, and like the rays in the sealife centre, seeming to enjoy the fuss, like placid dogs.It was another 'we're definitely in Australia' moment.After a few minutes of the boys showing off their stone skimming techniques, we headed back to the car and were on our way to the winery.

We arrived at the Leuwin winery estate and had a walk around their gallery - it had never even occurred to me before that there was a lot of time and effort invested in the pictures on wine labels, although most of them were quite bland.Deciding that we couldn't afford lunch at their swanky restaurant, we headed to the bar for the free wine tasting session... although it was water for Dave, as designated driver.Several samples later, I was happily telling the barman that my favourite wine was the first one 'because it was nice'... not exactly Jilly Goulden, although it's hardly my fault that I was tipsy from so little wine, considering we've hardly drunk anything in seven and a half months!

Next stop was a chocolate factory, and by this time Dave and I were starting to realise why people like Margaret River so much - the whole place is based around wineries, chocolate, cheese and olives - great for free samples and fancy purchases, probably not so good for gout sufferers.

The chocolate factory had huge bowls of dark and milk chocolate drops, to which we all helped ourselves whilst perusing the fancy chocolates on display, before moving on to a cheese factory, then a fudge factory.Unable to fit in any more free samples, we headed back to the hostel to relax and massage our full-of-rich-food stomachs.Recovered, we drove the couple of kilometres back into Margaret River from the hostel to look for somewhere for dinner... although unfortunately most of the food places matched the prices of the fancy foods that we'd been coveting all day, and were out of our league.We found a lovely small chip shop and picked up some red emperor fish with chips and mushy peas to take away (20c extra for vinegar!), and took the car over to another beautiful nearby beach - after we'd put away all of our food, we lay back and admired the bright stars in the beautiful southern hemisphere skies.

The next morning it was back to business - we visited a sweet shop (and bought some chocolate and mint, and chilli and chocolate fudge), an olive oil factory, a family brewery (where Caroline and I sampled the $12 taster paddle, and then we munched on barley seeds whilst taking a tiny tour of the microbrewery), and another trip to the cheese factory to fill our cool bag with cheese and stuffed olives for next week's lunch.

It was time to leave, although Caroline and Flemming were staying another few days at the hostel, so we dropped them off and headed back for Perth.This was our first experience of driving any distance in Australia, and we have been assured that these fairly empty roads are positively exciting compared with some that we have yet to come on our travels - we've heard tales of people becoming ecstatic at a rare telegraph pole or tree, having not seen anything at all for hundreds of kilometres.

We arrived back at Steve's safely, glad to be 'home' but also excited about our travels ahead - even this small taster has us desperate to get on the road again, as we've definitely not got the travel bugs out of our systems yet, although we know that a few months working means a lot more cash in the bank for fudge and cheese yet to come!