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Day 64 - Margaret River wine tour
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Needless to say, last night I stayed up to master the Nintendo Wii console for a few hours, so got to bed a bit later than the others ;)
Simon had to meet his new boss first thing, Lisa went for a walk around the town and to grab some breakfast, and Katie & I were able to relax before the bus collected us all around 10am.
The driver of the small mini bus was called Wally, and we soon established that he was an ex-copper. Obviously this meant that Si & he bonded instantly, Lisa was also relaxed with him, and I was left to regret my dig about "bloody police" to Si a few minutes earlier !!! (I wondered what that look in the rear view mirror was all about !!)
If I've not mentioned it before, Lisa is a senior member of the STA travel agent team in Perth, so has been a very friendly and invaluable resource for us during our brief stay. She had booked us all on the tour, which was to involve 3 wineries, a brewery, a cheese factory and a chocolate factory.
We were all very happy when Wally told us that we would be the only people on the tour, because this meant we had the bus to ourselves and no time pressure whatsoever. We could do exactly as we pleased, which was fantastic news.
I won't go through each vineyard/winery in detail, but they were all very generous with their sampling. We've been lucky to do wine tours in Napa Valley, St Emilion and Epernay, where they were all a bit more stiff, normally limiting the number of wines you could sample. There was none of that business here, so we got stuck in to pretty much anything they had in a bottle !!
Si & Lisa were looking to buy a fair bit of wine, so Katie & I didn't feel too bad that we wouldn't be able to this time. Transporting wine with all our backpacks would not be the smartest thing to do...
We did buckle once, to buy a really fruity desert wine, figuring that with Si & Lisa buying a nice drinkable red & white to have before we left, we would get a nice desert wine to finish the night off with some elegance !
The wineries were very good, but I was also really looking forward to the brewery, which obviously had a very nice pub attached to it, surrounded by typically scenic environs for this lovely part of the country. We had a glorious day in which to wallow in our alcohol, we couldn't have asked for more.
There has been a real explosion of micro-breweries on the west coast recently, so the chances were that the beers were going to be good, and they certainly were. We bought a sampler tray of 6 beers, starting off with a "light" and working our way through some wheat beers, a pale ale, a dark ale, a white beer and finishing with a TREMENDOUS nutty dark ale which I could have drank all day long... Naturally I bought a few for Si & I to enjoy later, and a couple for Wally to say thanks for being a legend.
After the brewery we went for our lunch, at a beautiful restaurant themed around Lavender. It had a small shop which doubled as the lobby, which sold pretty much anything to which lavender could be added ! Hand creams, moisturisers, jams, jellies, cushions... and of course wine ! I think Simon TURNED a shade of lavender when he tasted the wine, it was... interesting...
When they brought our cold sharing platter out to the table I think we were all a bit disappointed as we all fancied a big hearty lunch, but in actual fact it was perfect. Salad, peppers, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, chicken skewers, ciabata, quiches... yummy scrummy for my tummy ;)
We then set off to our final winery, which was the weakest of the three but had some fantastic homemade liqueurs made with various oddities like cheesecake, white chocolate, jaffa oranges etc. They were VERY sweet, but rather nice I must say !
When we were leaving the last winery a woman told Wally that the chocolate factory had suffered a break-in overnight and as a result were closed today. When he passed this on to us I though Katie was going to burst into tears !!! She was REALLY looking forward to the chocolate tasting.
We decided to have a look anyway and thankfully they were open and denying all knowledge of the break-in with a terse "no comment" to any enquiries. Not quite sure why they didn't just admit it, but anyway...
The chocolate was all imported from Belgium and then mixed by them to give it a local twist, and they had LOADS of different kinds. They were sold out of the 2 flavours that Si recommended (unless the thieves had sweet tooths ?!?!), so we bought a few others which were ok without blowing our minds. I guess it takes a LOT to impress Katie when it comes to chocolate !!!
Our final stop was the cheese farm, where we tasted some delicious home made cheeses, and I had a fantastic mango milkshake that makes me lick my lips just writing about it ! Katie & I managed to not buy anything but Si & Lisa got stuck in again !
Wally then drove us home, and it was during this drive that we passed a few poorly dressed chaps on the side of the road waving their arms around and looking like they were going to start a fight. Simon then showed just how much of the Aussie DNA has permeated his psyche but uttering the IMMORTAL words:
"look mate, a couple of bogans are about to have a blue"
It was like something right out of the mouth of Joe Mangle from Neighbours !!!!!
Katie and I just looked at each other in disbelief as this ex-native of Hayes, London suddenly turning into a 'fair dinkum' Aussie, right in front of our eyes !!!
As we got home, we said our fond goodbyes to Wally, who offered to help Si settle into the town with a game of golf whenever he wanted (Busselton is that kind of town), and we decided to walk down to the beach before dinner.
On our way to the beach we walked down the beach path admiring the views when all of a sudden Simon jumped in the air and Lisa screamed ! Katie and I were right behind them so quickly saw the reason for this reaction > a bloody big snake by the path !!!! Instictively I took a few quick steps backwards away from the snake, but Katie was so shocked that she just froze !!
We grabbed her just in case the snake came our way, but it seemed totally non-plussed by our presence. While we backed away it slithered across the path to the beach, it was so long that it covered the whole width of the path !!!
'Quick Draw Fey' did manage to get a quick photo first, naturelement ;)
The adrenalin was pumping for most of the walk down the beach and into town, which was punctuated by Katie practically jumping out of her skin whenever a twig blew across our path !! It would have been funny if we weren't all a bit jumpy !! Lisa hadn't seen a snake like that since she was a kid, and Si hadn't seen any since he got back to Oz, so it was pretty rare all told.
...and remember that all 10 of the world's most venomous snakes live in Australia. ALL TEN OF THEM !!!!
After the event I slowly realised that the snake had clearly been summoned to scare us by an absoluely ridiculous dance that Katie had broken into minutes before the snake made his entrance, for no apparent reason. I was just walking along with her, holding her hand, wondering what on earth she was doing, but I didn't stop her because she looked really happy ! Little did I realise that she was calling a snake to come and get us !!!
I will be more vigilant next time... ;)
We found a nice pub/restaurant for dinner, which was very good but MUCH too large for us (yes you did read that right !) so none of us finished.
During the dinner Lisa started to feel a bit "crook" (ill), so Simon walked her home while we tried to finish our meals and drinks. By the time we got home Lisa was in a bad way and spent most of the next 12 hours chucking her guts up, poor thing.
Understandably this rather killed the evening, but we were much more worried about Lisa being ok than missing out on anything.
It was still really early and the night was effectively over, so after a few quick games on the Wii, we took our cue to have an early night, and hoped that Lisa would feel better the next morning.
Lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
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