Wine, Chocolate and Cheese - the foodies paradise

On Thursday we left Perth, for the South west corner, in our little camper van. Margaret River area is one of the most popular holiday spots for western australian - this should have alerted us that maybe booking ahead would have been wise (that and all the guide books saying booking ahead in school holidays is essential!). After much faffing and phoning up places we eventually managed to find somewhere to park our van just in time to watch the sun set over the bay and cook up a bbq on one of the communal bbq spots (most areas have bbqs just off the roads and in scenic locations that are free to use.)

The reason for Margaret rivers popularity is the good surfing (I've taken the guide books word at that, there are alot of surfing types around though and the waves look pretty big?!?) and the abundance of vineyards (or wineries). Back in the sixties an academic wrote a paper suggesting that the area has the perfect climate (no rain in the growing season, warm etc) and ideal soil for vitriculture. After that the people kept coming and coming to have a piece of paradise (and a slice of the huge amount of money flying around). We looked round 4 winneries (each offers free tasting and at most its possible just to pull up and look around).

The Leeuwin Estate is one of the largest and oldest in the region. It is also the first vineyard to open its doors to the public and regulary puts on music shows on its amazing outdoor stage. Unlike some of the more modern large winneries it was very obvious that this one had grown organically form quite small beginnings. The Voyager Estate is another large winnery but this has a completely different flavour. The guy who bought it has decided to completely copy the Dutch arcitecture style of the South African vineyards - think lots of white washed buildings and the most amazing rose gardens I've ever seen. Unusually for one of the larger vineyards he seemed to be pushing a more environmentally sensitive method of growing. At the end of each vine were sacrificially plants - to tempt the various flies that blight grape vines (rather than relying soley on pesticides). He was also running a trial organic area to test the quality of the grape... watch this space I suppose. More importantly in this area with decreasing rain fall, there seemed to be a real effort to control the amount of water used (none of the large show fountains and other water features of some of the other estates.)

On a slightly smaller scale we looked round the Brooklands estate and sampled some of their wine. I'm ont a wine expert so I'm not going to try and describe the taste other than to say the Chardonny was quite nice. The scenery around this yard was very beautiful, particularly impressive was the Kurri woodland.

Finally at the complete opposite end of the scale we visited the Swallows welcome vineyard. This is a tiny small holding set up by a retired couple from the wheatbelt. They have built their own house and cellar using handmade mud bricks and created an amazing wild flower garden. The wife Patricia is a wild flower artist so they have build a wild flower chapel (also out of mud bricks) to show case her work. They open the 'chapel' up for local people to have parties and weddings in etc. The whole area is really beautiful and makes use of the naturally growing trees to keep the place cool. He is an ex wheat farmer (the moved to Australia on a Royal Agriculture post after her trained in tropical agriculture in Trinidad (where my grandfather also trained!)) who has now turned his hand to vitriculture as a hobby (along with treble recorder playing). Their wine was really lovely - they only had red wine but it was really refreshing - so much so that I bought a bottle to enjoy with dinner.

This morning we visited the Lake Cakes - the area is also known for its limestone caves. I closed my eyes for a very steep and long descent into the cave (heights not being a strong point). The cave is quite young (in geological terms) at only 2-3 milllion years, this means that the formations are still undedeveloped so rather than one of two large stalagtites etc (as in previous caves i've visited) there were literally hundreds of tiny straws of limestone and only a few large features. The water in the cave is apparently decreasing at the rate of 1-2mm per week! They're not really sure why but its probably to do with the low rainfall that WA has experienced over the last 30 years...

On now to Walpole - home of the tall trees.