Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Margaret River

Margaret River - 26th to 29th April 09

Stockton Lake
Stockton Lake Western Austraila
From Margaret River

The distance from the Wave Rock to Margaret River was around 500ks from memory. In OJ travelling at 85kms per hour this was going to take a while! We did not leave the Wave Rock until after 3pm. This meant a long drive into the night (It gets dark here at 6pm!) We drove until around 10pm and parked up at a free stop (mentioned in our camping bible) set the tent up and went straight to bed. The place we stopped was called Stockton Lake Rec Area. We got up in the morning to a cold but wonderful place. The view of the mist rising off the lake was really nice and we hung around for a while talking to a fellow camper about how nice a free stop this was. It’s places/nights like these that will stay with us…

Margaret River - Wine Region
Margaret River Wine Region Western Austraila
From Margaret River

Margaret River after the long night drive was not too far away now and we headed off at a reasonable hour. We passed through Bunbury and stopped off at a cheddar cheese factory along the way. We tried a lot of different flavours of cheddar and plumped for sun dried tomato, cranberry and smoked. The cranberry tasted nothing like the sample and did not go down very well . The other two were very good and went down well with a bottle of Margaret Rivers finest.

Margaret River (Known as MR from here on) is WA’s most famous wine region. It is only 40-50 yrs old, so much younger than the two other regions we visited (Hunter Valley and Barossa Valley).
MR is more renowned for being a white wine region then red. This pleases Heidi more than me! There was also a locally famous chocolate factory that H decided was a must visit. As it turned out, the 1st place we visited! Chocoholic!
The chocolate we both agreed was very nice but not a lot better than that you can get from a normal shop (Cadbury, Nestle) yet quite a lot more expensive!
Anyway in the spirit of our trips to wine regions we bought a little and gave it a try. YUM

Vineyard
Margaret River Vineyard Western Austraila
From Margaret River

After this we visited a few wineries, they were miles form any where so we had to drive this time (Remaining under the legal limit – man the Barossa was great!!).
Some of the properties these wineries own are awesome – huge estates with perfectly manicured gardens (all to entice you in of course).
We headed back to camp with our purchases and sampled the delicacies of the MR – Very nice (Not as good as the Barossa though – Carl spoilt himself with the Shiraz there and there is no going back now). Another day and much the same with the addition of watching some surfers catching some pretty large waves on the MR break and Surfers Point, we then headed for Busselton in Geographe Bay a very picturesque place indeed.

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