It is getting cold. Two degrees have been forecast. In a house that won't warm up. So we flee. Further south. Where there are distilleries. And we can drink the winter away.
It's 10 am, nearly in Perth. Kalgoorlie is only a distant memory. Planning to snuggle up, somewhere is the southwest corner of this fantastic state. Olli will have some quality time at a kennel while we rent a cabin in Busselton. He is excited. Never been to a doggy wonderland that big! Including a warm hydro bath and pawdicure!
Its a long trip. Distracted by our favourite playlist, we enter the land of plenty: plenty green, plenty lush bushes, plenty tall trees and plenty fat cows. It's amazing. Even the water tastes plentiful!
A good night sleep, the first one without nightmares. We head off to Margaret River's Farmer Market. Such a diverse mob of people! Young, old. Artists, blue and white collars, families. Loving the bath in the masses. And don't get me started on the Italian goodies! Here comes breakfast!
With goodies down our gullets we are ready for a visit to Margaret River Distilling Co. Delighted to see that they are in bed with Limeburners, the award winning distillery in Albany. After tasting our way through the some amazing whiskeys we fall for one of the best affogatos ever with their whiskey liquor. Yum! What better way is there to relax while listening to the gentle rain and the gargling brook nearby. People tend to apologise for the "dreadful" weather while we cherish the rare feeling of wet on our skin.
As the wet consolidates, we visit the Margaret River Dairy for some seriously good cheese treatment, Moo Town for more gin, and the Margaret River Chocolate Factory, an old acquaintance from our Perth days. Their speciality are the seriously mooreish crispy bacon infused chocolate truffles. Made it to The Grove Distillery for some grappa. Unfortunately, it went our of production years ago - not enough demand. Instead we add a bottle of absinth to our car. Pretty sure, we may have forgotten one or the other winery on the way. Somewhat this day quickly turned into a pleasant, fuel-driven blur.
Margaret River as a town is a good example of a tourist destination getting a bit too busy - at least for our liking. The residents know how to capitalise on that revenue stream. A bit too professional. Lots of cutout retailers that one finds elsewhere. Having written that, the town nicely marries old and new architecture with spectacular murals and street art woven into the mix. And lots of trees. Some look like seaweed!
Day two is a rainy one as well. Wde celebrate it with breakfast at Alan's, a Tripadvisor favourite. Lovely, intimate cafe in Busselton. Good service. Very handsome kitchen staff. Then a stroll through Busso's CBD and its beautiful foreshore. The park is magnificent. The jetty, longer than in Hervey Bay, has a train that runs its full length. An underwater museum at its head is currently getting developed. Someone is as imaginative as ambitious. Can't wait check it out and visit again.
Day three finds us at Cowaramup. Translated, it means "Place of the Ringneck Parrot". But what a hoot! If you cannot spell it and the only thing you hear is "cow", make it a feature. And that they do with bovines in all colours lining streets and parks. Sorry, Margaret River, but I just lost my heart to Cowtown: very artistic, lots of cute little shops, cafes where staff genuinely care, and easy parking. No distillery though. But then, nothing is perfect. Otherwise we might consider moving in!
Taking Caves Road to Colgardup. The trip is amazing with even bigger trees hugging the road, green meadows, wild flowering lilies, roos, cattle, deer. Is this paradise or am I just deprived? And all that throughout the old karst land, following the coast tightly. It came together a couple of million years ago and is now riddled with caves. A handful of them open to the public.
Colgardup Cave is rustic. Stairs and walkways take us into the abyss. No lights. So we get a hard hat, an auxiliary torch and off we go with wobbly knees. I’m a tad nervous. We partly crawl on all fours. It claustrophobic. The silence is deafening and so is the darkness. But the experience is great! What a fab intro into the under world!
Mammoth Cave, a bit further down the road, is much bigger and illuminated. There is even commentary available. We grab a couple of headsets and embark on a self-guided walk. True to its name, the cave contains fossils of megafauna that vanished some 46,000 years ago and other animals that are not in this region anymore. Witnesses of a different climate. Did you know, stalagmites can be used to read how rainfall developed in the past? Similar to growth rings in trees, expert can extract dryer and wetter periods from the dripping stones, some of them reaching back thousands of years! Fascinating stuff.
The rock formations are great. When I was young, I imagined and painted underground cities. And here we are in amongst some of my wildest imaginations. Life-size and 3D. Wow!
Mammoth Cave is a large open cavern and can be walked from its entrance to its shady exit some hundred meters away. A rivulet runs through a mossy meadow that looks like a spitting image of parts of the Scottish Highlands. If you lay flat on your stomach, that is. I hope my last photos does this comparison some justice.
As we ascend, we find ourselves on a lovely path, taking us through the forest and across the road back to the info centre, where we started.
The chick in the info center does not like us. I ask her for a discount, as this will be our second cave. Unfortunately, the first one was done through a different company. So, no freebies. She did sell us though, reduced tickets for Lake Cave, our third encounter. And conveniently omitted that it is essential to book ahead and reserve a time for a ranger guided walk, the only way to visit this site. As we arrive the current tour just departed. Bitch!
Leaves us with a good hour to kill. In the middle of nowhere. We follow local advice to Witchfield Pies & Cakes. Another cute town, flogging its unique name. And great coffee.
Back for our late tour, just in time. Lake Cave is the deepest and most active in the region. The entrance, via a sinkhole, is close to 55 meters below the surface, and the cave another 15 meters deeper! With a river inside. Undermining a stalactite, it created a table, suspended from the ceiling and beautifully illuminated. A boardwalk winds along the water deeper into the cave. As always, rhinestones and cascading rock formations are to be admired. But wait, there is more: water puddles in the cascading rocks contain a tiny, dandruff like creature, one of our rare cave dwellers. At least so they say. As the creatures do not move, they may as well be bits of dead scalp. The guide is awesome, funny, informative. How amazingly different are all these caves!
We take ourselves to Aldi to organise some home cooked pasta. Yearning for comfort food in this weather. This shop had an alcohol outlet attached. Needless to say, we top up on cheap fuel! Finishing the day with TV and a good book.
Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse is on the menu. And what a great day it is! As always, the most interesting, happens unexpected! The water wheel at the lighthouse is enchanting. It was crucial in creating concrete for the foundations of the lighthouse in 1895. However, the water here is so rich in calcium, that the timber wheel quickly coated in a thick layer of float stone. It is now stuck in time and rock! Like Sleeping Beauty. I cautiously kiss it to see if something interesting reveal itself. But besides an absolutely stunning coastline with, some rare blue sky, everything remains the same...
There is something about lighthouses: build at the most unforgiving places, often under extreme hardships and in solitude. Yet, here they are, beacons of an area gone by, safely guiding seafarers home. Running the one at Cape Leeuwin (aka "Lioness") keeps you on your toes. Nothing for chubby ones. There are 176 steps to be climbed. Several times. Day and night. 30 litres of kerosene need to be carried to the top every 24 hrs. Man high lenses require be polishing. They only work, if clean and once the rotating mechanism is cranked up - every two hours. It works like a giant clockwork with ballast that is hoisted to the top of the stairs moving the mirrors as it slowly descends along its chains down the stairwell. And all of that by hand (and leg). There is a romantic side to being a light house keeper. But it's a hard and a sweaty one.
Coffee and scones at the light house are a must. Casually we run into Ernie Dingo, one of Australians most likeable actors and TV presenters. What a nice guy! I have got a man-crush on him and try desperately not to stare.
We find our way back along the coast line to the town of Augustus. It is located on the mouth the Flinders River. Simply stunning.
Back at Witchfield for a coffee and then to Yallingup at the north-west end of the Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park for a final stroll along the beautiful coast. It is the north end of the 135 km long Cape to Cape Trek. Avid hikers pass through coastal heath, magical karri forest and woodlands to sweeping clifftop views, spectacular remote beaches, limestone caves and historic lighthouses, from Cape Leeuwin to Cape Naturaliste. Instead of the seven day marathon, we embark on a short stroll between Torpedo Rocks Lookout and Yallingup Beach, just above the town.
Admittedly I was hoping to see some naturists frolicking in the surf. But it is too cold and, as I have to shamefully admit, the region is not named after friends of bare skin but after the French ship "Naturaliste". When navigator Nicolas Baudin penned the coast of then New Holland in 1801, he named the cape after his second ship and the large bay to the north after his flagship "Géographe". Hm, I was getting excited for a moment...
We found the statue of Korrianne Gnwirri on the end of the trek. She depicts the haunting tale of unfulfilled love and the strong bonds it creates into eternity. Korrianne was promised through Wadandi Lore to Datton, but she was in love with a strong young hunter, Medinite. She knew that soon she would have to leave, even though her heart, belonged to Medinite. Korrianne would walk to the beach, collecting wildflowers and coloured shells. She would sit and weave some of them into her hair. Medinite would hide close by. When Datton sent for Korrianne, she left, crying all the way. Medinite stopped eating and soon died. Korrianne, the beautiful, also gave up and let the Great Spirit come and take her to Kurranup, where she still waits to be reunited with Medinite.
On this beach, Korrianne sits looking out towards Kurranup – meeting place of the spirits of people who have passed – the horizon. She sits weaving shells into her hair... waiting… ... waiting... for their hearts and souls to be united forever.
Frustration and embarrassment go very well with fish'n chips at Dunsborough, our final meal for this trip - and a suitably nice one.
Here is a shout out to Olli, our holidaying dog: he gets me out of the house, clearing my head. Hope you had a great time without me any the doggy retreat! Or maybe he feels the same way. The moment we open the car to pick him up, he is already on the backseat, waiting for us to head home.
This is the last part of our trip from Newman via Kununurra, Litchfield, Alice and the Goldfields before we start our new job in Kalgoorlie. We clock up another 810 km across WA's southwest. This time we choose not to drive via Perth but jump up the hills at Collie and then via Williams, Bruce Rock and Merriden onto the Great Eastern Highway. Next time we shall try the Emu Fence track to Hayden and Wave Rock. All in all ten hours of smooth sailing with a few pee stops. In all, great driving.
So that’s it: 37 days, 10,350 km, $10,700, 1,600 photos! Quite impressive. One has to work on a better way to process track notes, personal impressions, pictures, and finally the blog...
Summary: too much driving, too much spent on fast food and alcohol. Mind you, this was mostly accumulated in the Mary River Region. So, one should not complain...
To be continued...
Track Notes
Distances to/from Busselton
to Kalgoorlie 785 km
to Dunsborough 26 km
to Yallingup 35 km
to Cowaramup 39 km
to Margaret River 51 km
to Witchcliffe 61 km
to Calgardup Cave 61 km
to Mammoth and Lake Cave 65 / 68 km
to Cape Leeuwin 104 km
Links worth noting
Busselton (https://www.busselton.wa.gov.au/discover/tourism), Marlee Country Kennels (https://www.marleecountrykennels.com.au/), Margaret River
Region (https://www.margaretriver.com), Margaret River Distilling Co (https://distillery.com.au/), Margaret River Dairy (https://margaretriverdairy.com.au/), Moo Town / Three Lillies (https://threelilys.com.au), Margaret River Chocolate Co (https://chocolatefactory.com.au/), The Grove Distillery (https://thegrovedistillery.com.au), Korianne Gnwirri (https://www.busselton.wa.gov.au/discover/heritage-and-arts/arts-and-culture/public-artworks/korrianne.aspx), RAC Busselton Holiday Park (https://parksandresorts.rac.com.au/busselton/)
Organising your Trip
Hema Australian Road & 4WD Atlas - Nothing beats the good old paper maps (no power or batteries required)
FuelMap Australia App - Looking for the cheapest fuel in town
GoogleMaps App - Organise your trip. When available, satellite views are superb to find that little private spot for the night off the beaten track.
MainroadsWA App (https://mrw-aue-tvlmp--appsrv-prd.azurewebsites.net/Home/Map) - This is a great little tool that will keep you up to date with any road closures be it for road works or severe weather events. Seriously handy for travelling outback.
Accommodation
WikiCamps App - Together with local intel, WikiCamps is our most valued companion in organising what to see and where to stay, wether it is for free or requires a fee. Besides free camps, it shows carve parks as well and the approximate rates per night.
RAC Parks and Resorts - If you are a member with any of the Royal Automobile Clubs in Australia (RACQ, RAC, RACV, ...), you are eligible for discounts on accommodation in any of their parks and resorts. Worth checking out!
G'Day Parks App - For $25 per annum (minimum sign-up is 24 months) you can stay at one of more than 300 G'Day Parks in Australia and New Zealand at reduced rates.
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