Lake Cave 28th July 2016

Today we set off on a short drive to the south west to Lake Cave. We were the only two on the 10.30am tour and so had a great experience with our guide Rusty. The cave is 62m underground so there were a lot of steps to get down there!

Looks a bit like a dinosaur skull

It was pitch black - yes he turned out all the lights, until I inquired - "Are you still there Rusty??" With the lake so close you wouldn't want to fall in. The most wonderful was the stalactite  and stalagmites on a platform which had had the sand beneath washed away. It appeared to be levitating above the lake. (Picture above)

Straws forming

These are called shawls

A ghostly figure holds a block of calcium carbonate

Rusty put on a "Light Show"

Beautiful reflections

More reflections in the lake

The now extinct short faced kangaroo  is honoured with a statue

Whew! 640 steps there and back.

Kangaroo Count Dead:8 Live 1

This morning we headed for Augusta -just a small seaside town - and then on to the southern most point of Western Australia at the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse. We wondered about doing "the tour" of it but the place is swarming with Asian tourists so we declined and went for a cuppa at Augusta.

We have seen cow models at Cowaraup and witch models at Witchcliffe, but thankfully no models at Dead Point, although it proudly announced "Wheelchair Access".

Our next destination was Pemberton. We had to pass through Blackwood National Park - very scuffy firedamaged forest, unrelentingly the same for KMs - which is why I guess we took to counting dead kangaroos

Pemberton was another small quite old fashioned town. We enjoyed our lunch here including olives and oranges thatAndrea gave us and cheese from the factory we visited yesterday.

We drove through more National Park with some magnificent stands of Karri (a eucalypt - not a kauri). We slewed off the main road to go to the Diamond tree which is one of the karri trees in the district that you can climb. Dont know what you would do if you met someone coming down as you were going up! Duncan didn't go too far up. It didn't look very "Health and Safety Approved"!

The highlight of today's travelling was finding Truffle Hill Farm and Winery. We enjoyed a truffle fasting platter and some very elegant wines in a tasting flight. Truffle is a condiment, not a food so we had it in mustard, aioli, oil and honey

Again GPS let us down, but with a stroke of luck we spotted a brand new road saying 36km  to Margaret River - a very, very straight road. It must have saved us 100km of travel!

That night we went to Miki's Tempura Kitchen at 6.10pm precisely.  We chose the degustation meal with wine matching. Unfortunately the wines were of very poor quality. The initial dishes were very exciting but then we had a very long wait and received a very poor dish. 

Mizuna, cabbage salad and tobiko salad

Aonori crust persimmon cream cheese, date shropshire blue

Hiramasa kingfish zuke

Top Drop Tours 26th July 2016

We were picked up by Kerry of Top Drop tours for a day of wine tasting and more. On our minivan tour were Graeme,a retired principal from Brisbane, Robert ( a retired shoe salesman) and his wife Elizabeth (got tiddly at the first stop) from Byron Bay who had come over on the Indian Pacific train to Perth and then bussed down, and two young couples from Perth Sam and Zoe, and Michael and Corina.

The first stop was Burch Family Wines which included the Mad Fish commercial range, the Howard Park prestige range and a further range made in collaboration with a french winemaker.

Our second stop was just the opposite - a very small vineyard of 7Ha - we had 8Ha, but some interesting wines at Cape Grace.

Providore had wines to taste as well as a range of pickles, relishes oils and sweet treats. There were also packs for baking with all ingredients included.

Clairault Steicker Wines was our lunch stop - excellent beef cheeks baked in red wine and puffy gnocchi. We also visited a cheese factory and finished up at Juniper which had some very fine wines.

After dropping everyone home we confessed to Kerry that we had been grapegrowers for 20 years, and felt that she had shown us a really good snapshot of Margaret River wines.

We went to a BYO Thai restaurant for dinner.

Heading to Margaret River

We packed up from the Duke Inn and set off for Margaret River - a long drive of about 4 hours made worse by the GPS sending us into a new development where the old road had closed. In the end we resorted to going to a Mc Cafe for a tea/coffee and asking a construction crew for instructions, and after a while got back on track. You know when you are on track when the GPS lady says "Continue straight ahead for 102km"
We were upgraded from a room to a unit with a lounge. Not many places open for dinner on a Monday Night but we found a good Italian place. Woolworths supermarket is in the next block so we could stock up on breakfast items.