Day 9 – Friday 3/12
Made our way back up the coast from Albany. Started out with going to the town of Denmark, on the way back. Near Denmark, there are more rock formations and pristine beaches. We also stopped in Walpole, again, for lunch. The café in Walpole was a tiny little place with great sandwiches, souvlaki, quiche and homemade scones. A pity I can’t remember the name but it’s the only café in Walpole that’s on the 2nd floor, the others all being one story buildings.
Besides that, in Walpole we went to see more trees. The Tree Top Walk was something, but there is another, Mother-Of-All-Big-Trees karri that grows on one of the hilltops – the trunk is large enough to fit a minibus in.
Next diversion on the road was Mandalay Beach – a very windy place, with an awesome boardwalk that lets you experience the wind in your hair. Like a lot of wind in the hair. Heh. The boardwalk ends with a long series of steps down to a pristine beach where the sand is as fine and white as powdered sugar. The coast is awesome and the ocean wind really cold – it blows in off Antarctica, after all.
Somewhere far far down the road home, we stopped in Pemberton. Pemberton is another blink town that is famous for a 60m tall tree called the Gloucester Tree – famous because it is used as a fire lookout. The tree has spikes hammered into its’ bark which allows people to scale it. Jules did the tree – up and down – in under 15 minutes. My cousin rocks. =) Around the area, for some reason lots of colourful birds gather and we spent such a long time trying to entice them into poses for picture taking.
Finally, we arrived back in Bunbury after a long long drive. Dinner was as good as ever – thick vegetable soup with bread slathered with cheese. And also as much as ever, with enough left over to supply 2 more meals. Heh.
Day 10 – Saturday 4/12
Winery day! Went down to Margaret River, about 1½ hours southwest of Bunbury. The region is packed with wineries and the wines are so cheap compared to what we get them for in SG.. even with price conversion, the wines here are like 2-3 time cheaper than what they are sold for at home. Slurp…
On the way down, we stopped at Jesters Jaffle Pies to pick up pies for lunch. Their pies are really good and packed full of ingredients. We also stopped in Busselton which has a famous 2km long jetty.. Did not bother to walk along the jetty, just did picture taking. Heh.
In the Margaret River region itself, we visited Happs River (very good, award winning and I like their wines, they also have a gorgeous resident tabby who is so good to pet), Cape Clairault (also rather good but don’t really appeal that much to me), Moss Brothers (also award winning but the normal price wines were too sweet and the good wines were too expensive for kiamsiap ole’ me), Amberley Estate (which has gorgeous grounds and a fairly cheap-by-winery-standards lunch), Lenton Brae (really expensive but with a gorgeous dog named Ben who licks walls.. hmm). I kept on having to go toilet because of all the wine and water I drank.. oops. =P
No time to finish more wineries, even though many others are reputed to be excellent as well. I wanted to visit a cave, the region is karst which means limestone, so there are many very pretty caves. The one we visited was Lake Cave and even though we left the wineries at 3pm, we barely made it to the last tour of the day which was at 3.30pm. Lake Cave is purely a tourist cave, though they have adventure caves as well where you get to put on caving gear and really crawl through the tunnels.
Lake Cave is situated in a huge doline, which is cavey language for a large hole in the ground. You have to descend into the hole by a series of steps, the first few of which were cut in the 1900s when the cave was first developed as a tourist attraction and are truly hairy. When you reach the base of the doline, another series of steps takes you into the ground to the cave proper. The cave has a lake that runs its entire length, which means it floods when it rains.. erps. Formations in the cave are very interesting, with a ‘table’, sphinx, dragon, rabbit and duck, and lots of straws and shawls. 2 of the straw formations were damaged 55 years ago and have grown only 20-30mm since then, so just imagine how slowly they grow.. wow.. The limestone that forms up the cave is really dense and heavy, so a small block can weigh a few kilos.
After Lake Cave, we went to a deer farm (eeks) where you see live deer running around outside, and then step into the shop and see deer meat for sale. Not the most appetizing thing, that.. erps. I bought myself a cute beanie though in green and blue shades. =)
Excitingly, we found a Coles supermarket in Dunsborough that stayed open till 8pm (whoohoo, what a bonanza in this everything-closes-by-5pm country)
Dinner was done by my mum this time round, a change from Aunt Eng Lan’s cooking. They are both very good cooks with differing styles. We had prawns and beef stew, excellent as I was starting to miss Chinese food. Jules entertained us a lot at dinner with his horrible Cantonese pronunciation… erps.
Day 11 – Sunday 4/12
Lazy day as nothing is open in Bunbury on Sunday. Watched Hero on DVD, so ironic that I have to come to Australia to watch a Chinese DVD – that’s cos my parents don’t buy DVDs and my uncle and aunt do.. oh well. *shrug*. Had to also pack for moving up to Perth tomorrow, my bags are really grossly overfull with my stuff, my parents’ stuff, stuff to give to others, stuff my aunt wanted me to carry back to give to XXYY so and so… blah de blah de blah. Cannot imagine how I will manage to lug all that by myself to Expo and then to Yew Tee. Oh dear..
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