The Southwest- part 4

john and i had intended to have a nice dinner together that night (it was our holidays after all) but alas, when you are in hippy-ville, things close on mondays at around 3pm.

denmark is probably what margaret river was about 15 years ago. small and quaint, it has a distinctive hippy flavour (yes, yes, go ahead and comment...) but has enough cool stuff in the village for you to know that it's going somewhere. we were immediately hooked on the area. close to the bush and the beach, not nearly as hot as perth, it's hard to go wrong.

our first day in denmark involved a bit of backtracking down the highway from whence we came. we wanted to visit the tree-top walk in the valley of the giants. the giants they refer to are the karri trees. the walk is an 80m loop above ground (highest height of 40m), and was designed to keep people off the forrest floor. it was pretty neat. there was also a short walk on a planked path through some of the trees, and i mean that literally. we walked through some of the trees. it's interesting because the trees hollow out at the base, the allow for a more stable rooting. australia does things differently all the time...

on our way home from the tree top walk, we stopped in at a meadery. we learned about honey bees and john learned about honey wine (or mead) and other such delicacies. we also found a small shop selling delicious homemade sauces and salad dressings...conveniently located at the toffee factory...

the next day was a bit warmer, so we decided to get to green's pool, a rather well known beach in the area. it gets it's name because it almost feels like it's a man made pool (only freezing, salty and slightly rough in the wind). it's a small bay surrounded by rocks, allowing the water to be calm (usually) and protected. we sunned ourselves on the rocks and dipped into the turqoise-green water to cool off.

my most disappointing moment of the trip also occurred in denmark... clients of mine had mentioned that the bakery in denmark won the "best pie of 2007" at the perth royal show, which means it's really, really good. i pointed out i was a (hippy) vego, and she said "oh, that's fine. it's a veggie pie". mmmmmmm. WRONG! the pie was a broccoli and cauliflower pie, which sounded promising. but upon warming it up and cutting it open, i realized that in fact, it was essentially excessively creamy cream of broccoli soup, tucked into a small pie crust and sold for a lot of money. i ate about a 1/4 before i could take no more. "best pie of 2007"? methinks not!

ok, but honestly, the trip to the southwest was wonderful. too short, of course, but are any holidays long enough? the next day we packed up our car again and headed back to perth, where we would see ellen off to canada the next AM.

john and i have already discussed our return to the denmark region. if we had enough money, we'd buy some land because i'm pretty sure it'll boom soon, but alas, we are penniless hippies. instead, we'll go camping :)

xo