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| Western Australian Museum - Maritime |
As we get ready for the big trip home (yes, our assignment
is coming to an end) we felt strongly that we should not leave the country
without having visited the western coast.
All of our lovely meanderings have been
on the east coast – from as far south as Tasmania, to all the way up north -
(practically the northern tip of Australia), with great times spent in between those
two points. Preparing for a short get-away to the state of Western
Australia (WA), we talked to colleagues about the pros and cons of Perth. They
spoke to us of a ‘country town’, not to be confused with a big city, and we
were somehow left with the impression that it would be less cosmopolitan than
the foodie city of Melbourne. However this was far from the case. We only had
two nights in Perth, and on both occasions were treated to a really exceptional
quality of sophistication in the cooking.
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| First sight - the Indian Ocean |
One of the big draws for me for going to WA was the Indian Ocean, and while my husband had never seen it, I used to swim in it all the time when we lived in Mauritius. I have burned into my retinal memory the image from the movie Tracks, when she first emerges from the desert to wade into the Indian Ocean (btw if you have not seen that movie, I highly recommend it. It is the true story of a woman who walked from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean with just her camels).
Truthfully, while Perth is a lovely town, there is not a ton of things to do there.
We went to the WA Museum,
which has several branches and a wonderful show on Aboriginal artists.
We also went on both days down to Fremantle, the hipper beach area of
Perth. While there we visited the Number 1 TripAdvisor rated destination: the FremantlePrison. Sound like an odd thing to do? We agree. An interesting twist is that this
prison was operational until the 1990s.
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| Convicts' area |
The original quarters for the
‘convicts’ – yes, the ones that were shipped there in boats – were quite
appalling, and the tour details all types of things such as the fact that they
had to plaster the walls at some point to cut down on the population of fleas
and other blood-sucking vermin that lived in the walls and came out to feed on
the prisoners. Our tour guide seemed delighted to share with us the fact that
they did not have toilets, and each prisoner was given a bucket … and no he was
not referring to the old times when the ‘convicts’ were there. Anyway, we found
the tour bizarre and somewhat depressing, and seeing the gallows as the grand
finale for the tour was just a bit too much for me.
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| Busselton Jetty - with tracks visible |
We headed out early in the morning for our drive down to the
Margaret River region, which is about 3 hours south of Perth. Along the way we stopped at the famed
Busselton jetty. How could we resist stopping to visit the “longest jetty in
the southern hemisphere”. Well, yes, it is long. Very long. So long that they
hook tourists into paying to sit on a little train to ride out to the end of
the jetty. We felt that sort of defeated the purpose, so we walked … almost to
the end of it. And then deciding that once you have walked one kilometer of it,
the next kilometer really just looks the same, we turned around. We had a nice,
but very overpriced, lunch at one of the two restaurants next to the jetty. With
hindsight I would have skipped the stop at Busselton and headed straight down
to Yalingup, which is where we were staying, since it is so much more interesting
and beautiful.
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| Yallingup - most western view in AU |
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We booked at the Windmills Break. They were offering a nice
package that included lodging and breakfast, which turned out to be terrific. I
expect that these types of deals are only available in the ‘winter’ months,
since in the other seasons they tell us that they “have more people down there
than they have places to put them”. Since the winter weather consists of days
mostly in the high 60s or low 70s, we were fine with that.
The Margaret River area is just plain gorgeous. A wine country that is still very undeveloped with wild calla lilies growing in lush abundance and great mobs of kangaroos lolling around in the fields during the day. We saw mobs of both big reds and western greys.
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| 'Roos' - big reds |
There are so many wonderful things to do in the Margaret River region, I will only attempt a short list. The Caves are a must .... we went to Lake Cave, which has a free floating table structure (see image below) that weighs a couple of tons. It is at least 1.5 million years old and is one of two table structures in the world (the other one is in a cave in France that is not open to the public). Our guide told us that Jewel Cave (not to be confused with the Jewel Cave that is in the US) is petitioning to be the 8th wonder of the world. Not sure they stand much of a chance, but it must be a special place.
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| Lake Cave free floating table structure |
Of course there are the wineries (we had a fabulous lunch at Will's Domain) restaurants (I highly recommend Cape Lodge for dinner) and the beaches, which are jaw-dropping beautiful.
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| One of the courses at Wills Domain |
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| Meelup Beach - Indian Ocean |
