The Wine Region
Western Australia, 2012-02-11 12:00 by Laerke


Day 10:
Continued south to Margaret River. On the way we picnicked in Busselton at the cool jetty and later went to the beach at Yallingup, a simply breathtakingly beautiful beach, with pure white sand and icy blue waters. The sun was still burning, but the water felt as if it had just washed in from Antarctica…brrrr…!
We camped in Leeuwin Naturaliste National Park close to the west coast; while eating dinner, two naughty possums came by to snatch our food. They were definitely not shy, but so cute.


Day 11 and 12:
We toured the Margaret River region and fully took advantage of the gourmet options. One day we had lunch at Bootleg Brewery, where we enjoyed refreshing ginger- and citrus beer. The following day, we had lunch at Groove Vineyard, where we gorged on cheese en masse. We spend our remaining hours visiting cheese, produce and chocolate factories and at night we enjoyed more visit from our now well-known possum friends.


Day 13:
Drove on to Pemberton via the towns of Greenbushes, Bridgetown and Ballingup, all quaint little places, but none of them especially interesting. We camped in the great forests near town, but the weather was against us, and it became a wet and somewhat chilly night in the shadows of the trees.


Day 14:
We tried to escape the rainy weather, by driving inland to Dryandra Woodlands - here we got a cosy cabin in an old wood loggers camp. In the evening, we went on a great tour at the Barna Mia animal sanctuary, which is located at a more or less secret place in the woods – only by following signs set up just prior to the tour, were we able to locate the sanctuary headquarters. Because of the cold and windy night, we were the only visitors to show up, so we were lucky to get an intimate and private tour. In the red light from our provided torches, we got to see many species of marsupials, one cuter and weirder than the next. We totally lost our hearts to all these small and fuzzy animals.

Our Cabin

The Dryandra flower

Day 15:
In the morning we had a great hike through the eucalyptus woods, but weren’t lucky enough to spot any wildlife other than birds; but the forests had a really nice smell ?Afterwards we drove east through endless wheat fields and arrived in Hyden in the afternoon. The reason to visit this out of the place town, is to see Hyden Rock which at one side has a cool formation known as Wave Rock, a rock face that looks very much like a giant petrified wave. Wave rock was cool, but walking on Hyden rock, which is a bit like a miniature Uluru was an unexpected bonus, nobody write about this in the tourist brochures, but it was much more interesting than just looking at the wave. We also visited a cave with some rock paintings; not that interesting, as the aboriginals did have a strange taste in art… We spent a freezing night at an uninspiring campsite near Wave rock; we were told that only a few days back, the area had had a heat wave with more than 40 degrees, but that was not the case anymore…the weather down under certainly is volatile.