LIFE UNLEASHED

We know many Australian’s don’t like Chardonnay.  Must have been all those teen years spent drinking cask wine on the beach.  But when you head to the premier wine region at Margaret River in Australia, not trying the chardonnay would be like not eating pasta in Italy!

Margaret River was one of our last frontiers of wine tasting, having visited most of the other big and not so big wine regions in Australia.   Barossa, Clare, Yarra Valley, Hunter Valley, Mudgee, Rutherglen — there’s a wine region for every taste and style.  Margaret River definitely lived up to its reputation.  We drove through rolling hills of giant karri trees and past some of the best beaches in the country to taste some of the best wine in teh n.  What other wine region in the world can you be surfing one minute and visiting premiere wineries the next.  Not to mention, heaps of boutique breweries and speciality food shops along the way.

We started our tour of Margaret River by joining the “Cape Long Lunch”.  A fundraiser for a local school, the Cape Long Lunch is a full day wine tour matched with food at 4 wineries and fun contests/draws along the way.   The day started with a last minute call from the organizer to let us know that they had a cancellation and we’d be able to join the group.  The catch –we’d have to meet them at the first winery.  No problem except what do we do with our campervan after the tour is finished?  We wouldn’t be in any shape to drive.  No problem they said!  You can park your van at the winery!

So that’s how we ended up spending the night camped at a winery!  The winemaker and his wife made us feel at home by offering their power to let us plug in the van and inviting us to have coffee with them the next morning.  Lovely people!  

The rest of our time in Margaret river was spent trying as many tasty WA wines as we could, enjoying a glass of the best Chardonnay in the country (the Leeuwin Art Series during lunch at Leeuwin Winery) and shipping home a few cases to enjoy back home in Sydney. 

Follow that up with a drive through Karri country, camping in pristine forests and attempting to climb a 70m tree via Fire ladders (while I cringed below – I only made it up about 10 rungs) and you’ve got a fantastic end to 6 weeks in Western Australia.