Margaret River

Leaving Pemberton, and feeling well on the road to recovery, we headed a couple of hours through the Karri forests towards Margaret River, the South West’s primary tourist area, for Christmas.

A lovely drive through trees, across gently undulating hills and with a random family of emu wandering across the road, brought us to the wine region, through the chic town of Margaret River and onward to the coast at Gnarabup – our home for 6 nights.

39 Riedel Drive blew the budget several times over, but accommodation was scarce as it seems that most of Perth decamp to Margaret River for the holidays, it looked gorgeous on the website and sod it, it was Christmas after all. The house was as beautiful as the website had suggested – a stylish cube of wood and exposed walls, quite industrial chic, with views of the sea from the lounge and bedroom, and 4 sofas (very generous for 2 people) providing seating to grab the view, snooze in the sun, get some shade or watch the TV. A fabulous fully-equipped kitchen, BBQ in the garden and laundry room completed the unit and ensured that we’d be more than comfortable here for 6 nights.

The countryside in this area was idyllic – tall trees and vineyards bounded by a ruggedly beautiful coastline. Margaret River itself is a nice little town that reminded Debbie of Beaconsfield (the new bit) – lots of lovely shops, eateries, the most delicious ice cream and a giant Woolies to stock up for our 6 days of self catering (including Christmas lunch).

At the southern end of the peninsula, the town of Augusta was peaceful and beautiful – another place set on a calm sea inlet, with dolphins swimming literally 6 feet from the beach – and close by was Cape Leeuwin, where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet and with the tallest lighthouse in Australia.

Gnarabup beach was less than half a mile from the house but lazy (and still recovering from flu) we didn’t walk it. Despite this area being one of the best surf spots in Western Australia, the beach is protected and calm for swimming, but care needs to be taken as sharks do visit these waters. As do the flies – they were an absolute menace throughout our time in WA but we didn’t get as far as purchasing fly nets to put over our heads – those that did were probably less irritated but they did look bloody silly!

Just a mile or so up the coast, at the Margaret River mouth, Surfers Point is where the action happens and we spent some time watching the very skilful (and obviously quite mad) wind- and kite-surfers riding the enormous waves. Apparently workforce illness is a real issue in this region when the surf is up!

Wine is what Margaret River is famous for – still a relatively new wine region but geographically one of the largest, producing only 1.3% of Australia’s total grapes but punching well above its weight in producing 20% of the nation’s PREMIUM wine.

And it’s chardonnay country too, so Debbie was beyond excited to get stuck in and booked herself onto a chardonnay tasting at Leeuwin Estate. She was the only person booked, so a private tour and tasting followed with Debbie relishing every minute that she was in Chardonnay Heaven. 5 wines to taste – the ‘standard’ Prelude Chardonnay (very nice quaffing wine, about £22/bottle) was followed by 4 vintages of the more exclusive Art Series wines, current release 2022, 2019, 2010 and 2003, with the latter 2 being very deep golden yellow in colour. It shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that the more expensive the wine got, the more Debbie liked it. However, it was surprising that she didn’t actually like the 2019 vintage very much – over £100/bottle but too minerally in her opinion. She’d fully expected to spend some of her Christmas gift money on a bottle of the current release 2022 at £75, that’d be a nice treat from someone – what she hadn’t expected was to be so blown away by the 2010 vintage, the nicest white wine she’d ever tasted, that she felt compelled to spend £175 of that Christmas gift money ON ONE BOTTLE OF WINE! Steve had been sitting patiently while all this was going on as he’s really not a chardonnay fan, so we followed up with a tasting of the reds. Cabernet Sauvignon is the other star of the region and we were sufficiently impressed with the Art Series version to spend some of Jonny’s inheritance on a bottle for Christmas Day (don’t worry too much Jonny, it was current release vintage so less than a third of the price of Debbie’s Chardonnay). Unusually for the region, Leeuwin also produce Shiraz and Reisling, and their Art Series Shiraz was very pleasant – which was a relief as Debbie had already sent Pippa & Steve a bottle for Christmas. The Leeuwin Estate is a must-visit in the region with a fabulous gallery showcasing the original artworks commissioned each year for each Art Series wine, a gourmet restaurant (we had no chance of securing a table at short notice), an impressive set of photos of artists who’ve performed there, and an airstrip for private pilots nipping down from Perth for lunch. Exclusive? Hell yeah!

Voyager Estate was another highly recommended vineyard close to our house – a gorgeous Dutch-looking building with fantastic gardens, including a fabulous rose collection, a beautiful tasting room and some stunning wines. Their sparkling Chenin Blanc tasted like apples in a glass – dangerously quaffable – but unsurprisingly their Chardonnay and Cabernets stood out so we bought a bottle of each. The latter was actually a very smooth blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc. Steve didn’t think the flagship Cabernet Sauvignon was worth the price – or at least he wasn’t feeling as frivolous with his Christmas money.

We also sampled Cape Mentelle wines, in the rather unusual setting of their outdoor cinema on Christmas Eve. As the sun set we sipped wine and munched on steamed dumplings and bao buns from the food truck while settling on our hired bean bags to watch Miracle on 34th Street – a perfect feel-good Christmas film. Well that’s Debbie’s opinion anyway – Steve thought it was a load of nonsense and 2 hours of his life that he won’t get back!

For Christmas Day we decided to do the full turkey roast despite the forecast being for a heatwave. We couldn’t find bread sauce for Debbie, but Woolies had everything else and we were good to go, although the Brussel sprouts were a disgusting price. The heatwave did indeed arrive and it was 38 degrees outside, too hot even for Debbie to sit in the sun (unheard of) and no chance of us braving the beach, but the aircon was doing its job and we were enjoying some chilled Christmas fizz. At 13.40 the turkey was 20 minutes away from ready, the spuds/’snips/carrots were just about to go in the oven, and then…… the power went off! The fuse box was OK so it must be a power cut, and this was confirmed by the owner of the house – system overload, power was unlikely to be restored until 17.00 – sh*t!! The residual heat in the oven would probably finish off the turkey but how the hell were we going to cook roast veggies, the world’s most expensive sprouts and gravy? On the BBQ obviously! So Debbie stood over the barbie, melting in 38 degree heat, trying to rescue Christmas lunch – you would not believe how long it takes to cook roasties on a bbq and boiling a pan for sprouts isn’t easy. It wasn’t gourmet, just the best we could do in the circumstances, so Debbie decided that her fancy wine could wait for another day. As could the Christmas Pud as we’d no way of heating it. The very next day, after we’d re-stocked the veggies (including more of the extortionate sprouts, as Christmas dinner is nothing without them), we did Christmas lunch properly. With the posh wine. The power outage on Christmas Day actually lasted until after 9pm by which time Debbie was fast asleep having drunk too much wine 🙁

And it turned out that Western Australia was the hottest place on the planet on the day the aircon went off!

Yallingup

For our last couple of nights in the Margaret River area we moved 40 minutes away to Yallingup, the heart of the wine region, for a vineyard stay. Aravina Estate had only just launched it’s accommodation and we were their very first guests in the brand new cabins (posh static caravans) overlooking the vines. They were very nice but hugely overpriced (places in this area can pretty much charge what they like), and there’d been some creative photography in brochure/website pictures as the land around the cabins was still bare soil for the most part. But the view across to the vineyard was lovely and the screen/projector combo was fun.

Our arrival co-incided with the first day of Aravina’s summer festival – with live music each afternoon, food on the lawn or in the restaurant, helicopter rides for those splashing the cash, craft beers from the tap house, and of course wine tasting. We fully intended spending our 2 days partaking in all of those activities, apart from the helicopter (we’d save that extravagance for elsewhere in Oz). And a lovely couple of days it was. Pizza & giant tiger prawns followed by a laze on the lawn with ice cream whilst listening to a bloke singing on the 1st afternoon. A tasting of 12 wines (generous servings too) before a ‘proper’ lunch and a bottle of wine on the lawn listening to some really random tunes from a DJ on the 2nd afternoon. We chose a couple of wines to purchase – we needed something to accompany our BBQ that evening after all. Unsually for this region, Aravina produce many varieties of wine beyond chardonnay and cab Sauvignon and we particularly liked their Chenin Blanc and Grenache.

We did leave the estate for a couple of hours to take in some of coastal scenery at this end of the cape and it was pretty spectacular, with rock formations providing a sharp contrast with the white sand, blue sea and crashing surf.

Injidup Natural Spa – a pool surrounded by rocks over which the waves crash and where lots of people were sitting. We thought it looked a bit chilly but very spectacular.

Canal Rocks – some beautiful scenery and apparently a good diving spot, but the divers were kitted up in 7mm wetsuits so not exactly tropical.

Smiths Beach was gorgeous, and if we’d not had lunch booked back at Aravina we probably would’ve spent a couple of hours there as it was cloudy, not too hot and comfortable. Traffic wardens were out in force though, fining people for parking on the verges as the parking spaces were full – miserable sods, what happened to their Christmas spirit?!

Busselton

On the North coast of the cape, and one of Western Australia’s most popular holiday resorts, we stopped en-route back to Perth to see the famous Busselton Jetty, the longest in the Southern Hemisphere reaching almost 2Km out to sea. Thinking about it, there aren’t that many places in the Southern Hemisphere likely to have jetties are there? Anyway, we managed to get tickets for the underwater observatory at the end of the pier so had a slow walk down as the toy train was fully booked. Amazing soft corals had formed on the pillars of the pier and there was some lovely fish life to observe. The pier itself was impressive too and packed with people fishing, snorkelling, jumping into the water or just ambling. The sea was blue (of course it was) and in the distance yachts were racing – what an idyllic place but with a more ‘holiday resort’ feel than the very exclusive Margaret River and Yallingup areas. For those who know – think of Busselton being a much nicer version of Torquay, whereas Margaret River is more like Dartmouth or even Salcombe.

There was a cracking brewery too – and as Steve was Dezzie for the day, Debbie took full advantage of a tasting paddle of 4 lovely beers.

With just a 2.5 hour drive back to Perth, our time in the South West was over – absolutely beautiful and easy to see why this is the main holiday escape from Perth.