Margaret River

Hi all, 

We left Manjimup on Sunday morning arriving in Margaret River late afternoon, we had morning tea in Pembertown & lunch at a roadside stop. We stayed here 8 days & it rained most of them, as you can see from the photos.

Margaret River Entrance

We headed of for a look around & ended up up the river entrance in a gale, then drove to another beach where the wind surfers were flying on the wind & surf.

wind surfer at Prevelly beach

On Wednesday we did a winery tour, 4 wineriers (Leeuwin, Watershed, Evans & Tate &Fermoy), Paul Rigby's gallery (cartoons), Margaret River Dairy (cheese), Olio Bello Olives, venison farm (great meat), M.R. Chocolate factory & lunch at Cowaramup Brewery, quite a good day in all.

The view @ Watershed Estate winery

On another day we visited Swallow's Welcome Winery & Art Gallery, after a long funny drive in the wine was ordinary but the art gallery was great, lots of botanical painting. Then we went on to The Berry Farm (lots of jam). We also went to Voyager Estate, beautiful wine, beautiful gardens.

The entrance to Voyager Estate

The entrance to the tasting room, also had a restaurant & rose garden

Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse

On another day we drove down to Augusta for morning tea as the scones @ the lighthouse are great. The lighthouse tour was good we got to go up the top (it had just reopened after some restoration) The lighthouse stands at the meeting of 2 oceans, the Indian & Southern Oceans. It took 12 months to build in 1896 & is Australia's Tallest Mainland Lighthouse @ 56 metres above mean tide level.

The sign

As you can see the different wave patten of the two oceans crashing onto the rocks, in the walk around the sign above gives you info, it was quite a wet, blowy day. One of the other interesting features of the area is the Water Wheel which was feed from a spring nearby & the water was used for the light house.

The meeting of 2 oceans, on the right is the Indian & on the left is the Southern, note the different wave patterns

The Water Wheel, encrusted with minerals.

Whilst zooming along the Caves Road this great sign appeared. The Karri forest here was fantastic with the sun on the trunks.

The beware of fairy's sign in the Karri Forest

The Karri Forest

We also visited a cave while in the area, there are many to see but we only did one, The Lake Cave boy was it worth it. We had to go down 370 odd steps to the entrance, into the beautiful lake cave, this is a bit short on water, so they have to water the ground above every night.

Looking out of the Giant Doline entrance of Lake Cave

Inside Lake Cave

At the top of the steps into the Gaint Doline entrance with stalactites all over

On another day we went to another surf beach, Gracetown, lots of great rock no surf. So ended our stay at Margaret River, from here we headed up to Yallingup, see you all in Yallingup.

The beach at Gracetown