Margaret River, Western Australia

The Margaret River region produces just 3% of the nation’s grapes, but it is responsible for more than 20% of the nation’s premium wines. Although the output is small, the region is large with over 5,500 hectares under vine and over 120 wine producers.

Still a very young industry with the first vines not planted until 1967, the Margaret River wine region has grown to become regarded as potentially one of the great wine-producing regions of the world.

There are many wine tasting tours available. Some popular winery choices include Voyager Estate, Xanadu Estate, Vasse Felix, Evans & Tate, Brookland Valley, Amberley, Driftwood, Leeuwin Estate, Cape Lavender, Wills Domain, Howard Park, Flying Fish, Happs, Wises, Moss Brothers, Bootleg Brewery and Cowaramup Brewery.

For $110 one company will pick you up at your door, take you to all the top wineries, feed you a gourmet lunch and drop you back home at 5pm. I'm not surprised this company has won 5 tourism awards. By the end of the day, going by the photos, the guests look extremely happy, at peace with the world and ready for bed.

Lake Cave, Western Australia

First glimpse of the cave

Excellent boardwalk construction

Suspended Table

Notice what looks a bit like little snow balls? They are stalagmites that were snapped off and slipped into a pocket of visitors to the cave before guided tours began. Fortunately, they are regrowing quite well.

Climbing out


Mammoth, Lake and Jewel caves are managed by the multi award winning Augusta/Margaret River Tourism Association. Each cave is unique and different from each other, we chose the Lake Cave.

Augusta, Western Australia

Flinders Bay

On 30th July 1986, 114 false killer whales stranded on the Augusta town beach. After a long battle involving over 500 volunteers, ninety-six whales were saved in what was said to be the world's most successful whale rescue at that time.

The old water wheel provided water from a nearby spring to the Leeuwin lighthouse and cottages. It's now encrusted in calcified lime.





Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, just south of Augusta, circa 1896, marks the spot where the Southern Ocean meets the Indian Ocean and still serves as an important navigational and weather facility.

Daylight Saving, Western Australia

After a three year trial, on the 16th May 2009, Western Australia had its fourth referendum on Daylight Saving and once again the people voted 'no'. The 'yes' voters claimed their state was completely out of sync with the east coast, being two hours behind the financial hub of Sydney and Melbourne. The 'no' voters argued that their commercial heart was in South East Asia who are on the same time zone.

I was reading a local newspaper article by Editor Judith Treby before the referendum took place. She wrote:

"... during our hot summers, when I arrive home from work with temperatures still hovering around 30 degrees at 6pm, it is too hot to exercise, other than go for a swim. On hot nights I am unable to enjoy dinner at the usual time and seem to lose an hour a day, waiting for the weather to cool down enough to eat. This is when I find daylight saving a negative experience."

Western Australia joins the Northern Territory and Queensland who have also said no to daylight saving.

Patrick Taylor's House, Western Australia

Horizonal wattle sticks

I was intrigued with the construction of this house and impressed at its ingenuity. A frame of posts was put up and thin sticks of wattle were placed horizontally close enough together to hold thick mud that was slapped on. Stiffened with soft straw and clay, the mud dried hard and if cow dung was used it was added as a final layer to give a waterproof finish. The inside walls of the house are slightly wavy in places but the overall look is clean and tidy. When you think of the cost of building a house today, the ingenuity of our early settlers is amazing.

On the waterfront in Albany it was built in 1832 and this eleven room wattle and daub home with the original shingles still on the roof is the oldest surviving dwelling in Western Australia.

Patrick Taylor was born at Montrose in Scotland in 1806 and orphaned as a child. Left a very wealthy young man, it's believed he was sickly and came to Albany for his health. He spent most of his time at his farm but came here to his beach house for holidays. I'm assuming that to have an 11 room holiday home back in those times was an indication of his vast wealth.

He was sensitive, introverted and very religious. When he met Miss Mary Yates Bussell and fell in love, he sent her many beautiful letters and poems.

Patrick Taylor, a true romanic.

Albany, Western Australia

Fishermen

One of the finest ANZAC memorials I've ever seen

Wind Farm



The Bridge


Streetscape

Brig Amity

The tiny settlement at King George Sound, later known as Albany, was established in 1827 and was the first colony in Western Australia. The British feared that the French would likely claim this vast land as their own if they got half the chance so Governor Darling sent a party of troops and convicts from Sydney to establish another penal colony. The journey took 6 weeks and 2 days to arrive on board the Brig Amity.

When Charles Darwin visited the sound he wasn't very impressed after he took rock and soil samples. He much preferred the Swan River site and two years later this other settlement, now known as Perth, became the major colony and Albany was almost forgotton.

But today Albany is jumping out of its skin. A thriving city of 35,000 people, major industries include tourism, agriculture - wool, beef and grain, aquaculture, fishing, wood chipping and mining.

The Albany wind farm consists of twelve 1800kW wind turbines connected to the Albany electrical system and control network and supplies approximately 70% of the city's electricity. The turbines are ENERCON E66 machines from Germany and were installed by Enercon Power Corporation, an Australian Company.

When Charles Darwin farewelled Australia he wrote:

... you are a rising infant and doubtless some day will reign a great princess in the South; but you are too great and ambitious for affection, yet not great enough for respect; I leave your shores without sorrow or regret.

I wonder what he'd think about us today.

Esperance, Western Australia

Hatch door

Skylab litter fee

Skylab oxygen tank

Spectacular scenery abounds here at Esperance, they call it the Bay of Isles. But the town is famous for another reason - thirty years ago this July, space station Skylab broke up over the Indian Ocean and space junk showered the little seaside town.

A young man, Stan Thornton, was there to witness the event. "There was this bunch of brightly coloured lights followed by big sonic booms, the sky lit up like a big retail shop" he said. His mother told him to go out to the backyard because she thought she heard something hit the roof of the shed. There he found sizzling bits of scorched metal.

Skylab was big news back then because it was the United States' first space station and the second one visited by a human crew. The San Francisco Examiner offered $10,000 for the first authenticated piece of Skylab brought to its office within 48 hours of re-entry.

So young Stan Thornton, then seventeen, jumped on a plane and arrived in San Francisco with no passport and only a shaving kit but his pieces were identified as plastic or wood insulation from Skylab and he got his $10,000 prize.

There was quite a lot of debris dropped over the town, some items were quite large and could have done some serious damage but luckily no one was injured. There was also a lot of coming and going of Government officials collecting and documenting every piece of debris they could find. The local ranger sent NASA a tongue in cheek $400 bill for littering and three months later the debt was written off but never quite forgotten. But now, after almost 30 years, the bill has finally been paid in full - but not by NASA.

American radio station host Scott Barley from Highway Radio paid the fine on NASA’s behalf from donations given to the cause by his radio fans. “I wanted listeners to start off 2009 with a generous offering of goodwill to our Australian friends south of the equator.”

Mr Barley said he hoped to travel to Esperance in July for the 30th anniversary of the Skylab crash.

Salmon Gums, Western Australia

On the way to Norseman I noticed some fabulous trees with pink trunks. I thought a combination of red soil, wind and rain had produced the pink colour but not so. They are Eucalyptus salmonophloia (Salmon Gums). The bark changes colour with the seasons and it has shiny glossy green leaves and small fruits.

I even found a town named after them.

The Nullarbor, South/Western Australia

North

South

East

West

Desert plants look like brocolli

Eucla Roadhouse

Nullarbor Roadhouse

It's hard to describe the Nullarbor. It's completely empty except for Roadhouses that suddenly appear out of nowhere every couple of hundred kilometres. They offer the weary traveller fuel, caravan parks, motel/hotel accommodation and restaurants. Apart from these Roadhouses, there's nothing else - no houses, no people, no little towns to go through - nothing but desert plants, shrubs, trees and long, straight roads - very long, straight roads with hardly any other traffic, just the occasional caravan or semi-trailer. With fuel available all the way, it's relatively plain sailing, except for the boredom. Out of this boredom someone created a shoe tree, others stopped to add their shoes and it's now a landmark and something to look at.

Everyone is very friendly and you get a wave from almost everyone coming towards you, including the truck drivers.

With a rainfall of only 6 inches a year, the Nullarbor is a dry and inhospitabe place but an experience not to be missed . Now I can cross the Nullarbor off my 'things to do before I die' list.

Great Australian Bight, South Australia

The Great Australian Bight is a bend in our coastline which forms a large open bay. Just before the Nullarbor Roadhouse, there's a turnoff down to the head of the Bight. The Marine Park has constructed boardwalks to observe the whales and the views are spectacular. Although it's a bit early, the season not starting officially until June, there were three entries in the visitor's book of whale sightings a few days ago, all late in the afternoon. No whales today but we did see some dolphins.

Fowlers Bay, South Australia

Sand dunes are slowly swallowing the tiny isolated settlement of Fowlers Bay, not far from Ceduna. They are advancing an average eleven metres a year and it looks like it won't be very long before the little town is completely covered in sand.

Ceduna, South Australia

Gateway to the Nullabor Plain, Ceduna is the last major town before Norseman, 1200 kms away, so travellers stock up here before leaving. At the border to Western Australia, any fruit, vegetables, nuts or honey are confiscated so you have to eat them before you get there. Tourists coming across the other way from Perth often stay here but usually only for one night so the town has a transient feel.

The caravan park is situated right on Murat Bay as is the hotel and you can walk to the everything from here. The Ceduna Foreshore Hotel won the South Australian Tourism Award in 2008. It has stunning views over the bay from the bars and bistro areas - it's unusual to find a hotel of this calibre in a country town.

Thanks to a tip from the lady in the Visitor's Information Centre, we had a delicious meal of King George Whiting bought from the Fish Factory, caught this morning, straight off the fishing boats.

Murphy's Haystacks, South Australia

Somewhere between 1902 and 1914 a Scottish agricultural expert was travelling in a mail coach and looked out and saw these huge rocks in the distance and mistook them for haystacks. Because the landowner's name at the time was Murphy, they became Murphy's Haystacks.

The current land owner, Denis Cash has graciously allowed hundreds of visitors access to his property to see these interesting rocks. He writes:

"When my Grandfather Denis Murphy made his selection of land in 1889 it is more than likely that an outcrop of rocks were not given much consideration, having left his family and his beloved Ireland behind in a state of famine. To provide the essentials of food, water and shelter would have been foremost in his mind.From early photographs it is obvious that these rocks were soon to be regarded as something really special. Picnics with family and friends at what became known as “Murphys Haystacks” were common. Every visitor to the farm had to see The Haystacks.

One hundred years later The Haystacks had become so popular that we decided to make entry more accessible. My family has been privileged to have had the opportunity to meet some of the many visitors to the site and made great friendships with people form all over the world."