The Southwest- part 1

the week of 10-17 january, the macphees, ellen, john and i packed up our (rented) subaru wagon and headed down to the southwest. and only 30 mins behind the scheduled departure time, which is actually 1.5 hours early in macphee time...

our drive to the south had us stop in bunbury for lunch - a rather non-exciting town about 1 hour south of perth. it is apparently known for it's "beautiful beaches" but i think between the 5 of us, we have seen some of the most spectacular beaches out there, so it was nothing special. it did however, provide us with a location for lunch.

we continued the journey via busselton, famous for the ironman (and 1/2 ironman) and it's 2km long jetty. the jetty was actually the reason we stopped by. at 1.9km long, it is the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere. a small chunk of it got broken off during a major hurricane a long time ago, but the rest of it still stands. it costs money to walk it, but you feel like it's ok because well, it's kind of neat. you can pay more to do the "underwater observatory" to look at fish and such under the jetty, but we opted not. having snorkelled with the best of them, we didn't think we'd be missing much. i will point out though, that the jetty does have a small trolley that runs the length, for people who are "unable" to walk. thankfully it wasn't working the day we went. at about 1.5 meters wide in some areas, it would've been a tight squeeze to say the least.

from busselton, we headed to our final destination for the first few days of the trip - gracetown. gracetown is a small village of approx. 400 people or something like that. it has a "restaurant" and a general store, and that's about it. it's nestled into a bay between cape augusta and cape naturaliste. this is important for later reasons. in gracetown, we stayed at a holiday house loaned to us by one of john's many wealthy clients. i use the term holiday house loosely. this house was probably more then twice the size of the place we live in freo. it was stunning. 2 storeys, all open plan. 2 bedrooms upstairs with a fab bathroom and windows along the entire length, allowing for unobstructed views to the northwest. downstairs had 3 more bedrooms and a whole other living room and bathroom. rather self-sustainable really. along the entire outside was a large patio and a patch of grass out front. it was truly a fantastic place to have a holiday.

our first night there involved having dinner and taking a short walk around the village. the next morning i went for a run and discovered some of the beaches and found bits of the cape to cape trail (from above. it's an 80km trail i think). later that day, we took the short drive into margaret river, aka "the wine region". luckily, only 10 mins away.

that day was spent walking around maragaret river, which i can only describe as a small ski town but without the ski hill. very cute, very upmarket because of what it is. fab restaurants that cost and arm and a leg. you can tell it used to be a hippy village until it was taken over some 40 years ago and turned into the centre of wine country. yes, only 40 years ago they planted grapes in the southwest of WA. they now win awards for some of the best wines in the country and are making headway around the world. we also hit up the margaret river chocolate factory, but it is somewhat over-rated. you can't really do much there except buy expensive chocolate after waiting in a line for half and hour. the day ended with a quick trip into the madfish winery. the largest in the southwest and one of john's enjoyed wines.

more to come...