SWAA: Jewel Cave, Bicentennial Tree, and Pemberton

Our last day in Margaret River started really well, with a delicious breakfast at the hotel and a trip to the local Saturday market.  As I said before Margaret River is well know for its local produce, so it was great to see the local market and pick up more food for our picnic lunch.

Our first destination for the day was Jewel Cave, but along the way we drove through what I'm going to call the "fairy forest" (actually called State Forest No. 45).  I knew one of the main attractions of South Western Australia was the beautiful karri tree forests, but this was the first time we had truly driven through one.  Someone had accurately captured the mood of the forest by "editing" this road sign, and it didn't seem like anyone was keen to fix it.

Our other main reason for going to this area of Australia was because it is wildflower season, and the forest floor was just starting to become blanketed in flowers.

The Margaret River region is home to about a dozen limestone caves, and Jewel Cave was supposedly the best show cave in the area.  If you have any questions about the cave, as usual, ask Ryan.  It was difficult to get good pictures, but it was definitely a beautiful cave system.  Unfortunately because it's a "show" cave they had some weird lighting effects and laser lines to point out certain features, which kind of cheapened the beauty of the cave. 

If you look closely, it kind of looks like a karri tree forest.

After the cave we headed to what was my personal highlight of the trip: the Bicentennial Tree in Warren National Park.  Now this isn't just any tree; it is the tallest climbing tree in the area.  Soaring to 75m high, the Bicentennial Tree is equipped with a re-bar spiral "ladder" and multiple platforms, originally used for spotting forest fires.  Those of you who know me know that I am a wuss - I don't take dangerous risks and I really don't do anything I don't want to do.  For whatever reason, ever since hearing about this tree, I just knew it was something I had to climb.  I never even climbed apple trees as a kid, so I have no idea what possessed me to do this!  To put this in perspective there were no guides, no ropes, no harnesses, and no safety net.  Really, this kind of thing would never pass safety standards in Canada and I can't believe it's allowed to exist here.

Now to set the scene.  Ryan and I rock up, all confident and ready to climb this thing.  There are a few weary people at the bottom watching their friends/family climb, but the place is relatively deserted.  Without much hesitation, we both start the climb to the first platform, about a third of the way up the tree.  Once at the platform we look at each other and go "yup, that's all I'm doing!" and "boy that was insane"!  Really, it was pretty damn scary.  At that point we're both shaking in our shoes working up the courage to go back down, but as I become more confident I realize I'd be mad at myself if I didn't just suck it up and finish what I started.  After a few more minutes, I was ready!  As Ryan headed back down, I worked my way to the top.  Surprisingly the first bit was the hardest, and once I got into a rhythm I was completely fine.  Ready for a picture?

The bottom arrow is the first platform, and the top arrow is the top platform.

 If you look really closely you might be able to see me in a red shirt on the top platform.  Now for some pictures from the top!

You can see Ryan at the bottom.

View over all of the trees from the top.  It's bleached out, but I could see massive sand dunes in the distance.

This was my descent from the lowest platform.  I was feeling brave enough to take a picture!

As you can see the view from the top was kind of underwhelming, but that's not why I climbed the tree.  And although I probably wouldn't do it again, I'm glad I did it!

With my feet firmly back on the ground we headed for our hotel that evening: the Kerri Valley Resort in Pemberton.  Because it was Saturday night we had to splurge since lots of places were fully booked for the night.  We ended up in a large 2 bedroom cottage in the middle of a  beautiful forest on a lake.  I know to Canadians lakefront property isn't that exciting, but in Australia it's a novelty if it's freshwater.  We didn't know what to expect so we were kind of shocked when we showed up to this:

Quite a bit more lavish than we were expecting!  Overall though the place was way overpriced and I was allergic to it so it must have been mouldy.  They had also fully booked their restaurant, so we had to have take-out for dinner instead.  That aside, we got to enjoy another lovely evening of wine, board games, and chocolate, this time with a lake and a fire place.

Ryans "classy" face

SWAA: Busselton Jetty and Margaret River

If you recall from yesterday's post, Ryan and I arrived late for our Busselton Jetty tour and had to run/speed walk up the jetty to catch up to the group.  Amazingly, we made it only 5 minutes late!!!!  We were of course sweaty and out of breath, but we did it! 

The tour was really cool.  We descended to different viewing platforms, ending up 8m below the surface of the water.  There had been a great white shark sighting that morning just down the beach, so we were told that if we saw a large school of fish to watch out for the shark as well.  I'm not sure if it was unlucky or lucky, but either way we didn't see one.  It was kind of stormy so the water was pretty murky, but we could still see some neat things.

After the tour was over a small train picked us up so we didn't have to walk back on the jetty, which was actually a relief after the stressful day we had.  At this point we were very much looking forward to checking into our hotel and calling it a day, so we were pleasantly surprised with how awesome the place was.  It was called "Heritage Trail Lodge" and the property was absolutely beautiful.  Set on a small hill on the main road leading into Margaret River we were surrounded by forest, flowers and birds, and it had by far the most comfortable bed of the trip.  This was the only hotel we booked in advance, and I'm so glad we did.  The owners were very friendly, there were free movie rentals, and the continental breakfast was delicious and made from all fresh local supplies.  Needless to say, that's when the trip started to look up.  We stayed two nights and tried to stay a third but unfortunately they were all booked.

That night for dinner we decided to check out the closest restaurant that had a flyer advertising "French Vietnamese Fusion" food.  We had absolutely no idea what form that would take, but it had a picture of a delicious spring roll so we thought we'd give it a go.  Turns out it was Italian Night (go figure) and it was the chef's first day!  Despite that the atmosphere was cozy and the food was delicious so well worth the trip.  The salad dressing (a balsamic vinaigrette) was a special concoction which we loved and even bought a bottle to take home.  Before eating we bought a bottle of wine since the restaurant was strictly BYO, which we promptly polished off and made for a fun walk home in the dark. 

The next morning after a great night sleep we took a short walk to the actual river behind our lodge called "Margaret River."  Along the way we ran into a really fun playground.  Ryan and I (mostly Ryan) usually make a point of playing on them, which led to this great picture (but truth be told I took a turn too!)

Click picture to enlarge and see Ryan's "serious working face"

Now for some actual pictures of the walk.

  

During that afternoon we went on a wine/gourmet food tour of Margaret River.  The area is very famous for wine (specifically a blend of Semillion Sauvignon Blanc - yum!) but also for how much food they produce locally.  Most people on the tour had already been to two wineries by the time we joined the group, but we still managed to hit a brewery, cheese factory, Fermoy Estates winery, an olive store, chocolate factory, Evans & Tate winery, and a venison farm.  It was a pretty full afternoon!  Our goal was to pick up enough stuff for dinner (and we had already bought a baguette from the local bakery), so it gave us an excuse to actually buy things.  We out-bought everyone else by far!  The group was great to tour with; they loved that we were Canadian and asked endless questions and made lots of jokes all in good fun.  We got our digs in "a-boot" the Australian way of life too though, so it wasn't all one sided!  Anyways, when we got back to the hotel we set up dinner on the patio set outside our room. 

Unfortunately I broke that delicious jar of tomato jam right after this, but the pesto and cheese did us for another few lunches like this!

And now Ryan's making his "serious eating face"

I told you the place was awesome!

South Western Australia Adventure: Bunbury, Dunsborough, and Busselton

Yesterday Ryan and I got home from our latest adventure in South Western Australia.  We flew in and out of Perth and explored a 1750 km loop in the area, covering everything from treetops to caves and all sorts of great food and wine in between.

We had a lot of great moments on this trip, but unfortunately the first two days weren't fantastic.  Our flight arrived around 1:30pm so we drove directly to Bunbury that afternoon.  I expected Bunbury to be a lot more interesting, but instead it was a large town surrounded by factories.  The main attraction there was supposed to be their dolphin centre, but even if you paid to go there you had no guarantee of seeing any dolphins.  The visitor centre recommended a hotel to stay in, but it was really crappy.  The room had so many drafts it was like a wind tunnel!  Luckily we had a great breakfast included, which was  good start to our second day.

We left Bunbury on Day 2 and headed to  Busselton.  This was one part of the trip that I was really looking forward to because they have a 1.8km long jetty with an underwater viewing platform at the end.  Unfortunately, this is where the day got crazy.  When we showed up at 9:30-10:00am they had already sold out of tickets for the 10am, 11am and 12pm tours because the jetty hadn't been open for a few days due to weather and they also had a few school groups touring that day.  We opted for the 3pm tour thinking we could do a few things in the meantime.  So off we went on the 50 minute drive to Margaret River!  In retrospect that was a bad idea, but we wanted to book a food and wine tour for the next day and get some info on whale watching.  We should have just done this from the Busselton visitor centre, but hindsight is 20/20!  Upon arrival they informed us that in fact the best whale watching in the area was in Busselton or Dunsborough!  Oops!

The trip to Margaret River wasn't a complete loss because Ryan convinced me to check out a hedge maze!  It was called "A-Maze-In Margaret River" which I think is quite clever.  Honestly, I was very nervous about the maze.  I have absolutely no sense of direction and the thought of navigating a maze was worrisome. 

In my hand is a map of the grounds, but sadly they didn't put a map of the maze on it.

Despite Ryan's attempts to run away and leave me fend for myself, we made it out of the maze successfully! 

It was well worth the detour and actually very fun.  The grounds were beautiful too and we were the only people there for most of it.  Before we left there was another puzzle to do where you had to move from once circle to another by following the paths in the order of "white, red, black" to get to the middle.  Turns out this was more challenging than the maze, and I only succeeded after Ryan's help.

As you can see, it was quite an exciting place!

Still thinking we had plenty of time we jumped back in the car and drove another 40 minutes or so to Dunsborough, stopping on the way to pick up some subs for lunch.  We thought we could whale watch and eat lunch, then drive back to Busselton for our tour.  Turns out the whale watching place required a 10 minute walk to get to the viewing area, and we were already running way behind.  We walked briskly to the platform and found a few people there looking for whales.  No one had seen any, but they were looking way far away at rocks where "if you looked really closely you can see some specks that look like seals".  As it happened, I spotted some seals right in front of us on the shore line which no one else had seen yet!  Time for my favourite game: spot the seals in this picture!

Ryan and I each had a possible whale sighting in the 15 minutes we stayed at the platform, wolfing down our subs while peering out through binoculars.  When we left the platform we had exactly 40 minutes to get back to our car and drive 45km to Busselton for our 3pm tour.  We had a bit of a buffer period because the 3pm start was when the train left to take us down the 1.8km jetty.  Our other option was to walk/run down the jetty in time for the actual start of the tour at 3:25.  After driving as fast as I could safely go, we made it to Busselton at 3:10pm.  Our only remaining option was to run down the jetty!

See that tiny bump on the far right??  Yes, that's where we had to be.

Did we make it?  Cliffhanger!  This post is far too long already so you'll have to find out tomorrow!

I leave you with this piece of advice though.  Watch out for shark helicopters.  They'll get you every time.