Caleb’s early morning announcement this morning- ” Not today, but the next day is my birthday”. He means tomorrow!
We woke early (at about 6ish) and headed to Bunbury to pick up Emma. Today we were doing some sight-seeing in Margaret River. Poor Emma didn’t get to see many of the sights from the car though as she was engaged in constant Star Wars figures battles/conversations with Caleb. She was much too polite to tell him to give it a rest and not fast enough to escape to the front seat! After the first couple of stops we insisted she take the co-pilot’s seat so she would finally get a break.
We stopped first at Busselton, looked at the longest jetty in the Southern Hemisphere, decided it was keeping us from the wine in the wineries and so we took a quick look at the professionally sculpted sandcastle on the beach. Judy spoilt Caleb with an ice-cream and we continued on.
We stumbled upon Yellingup Maze Place which required a visit. Ray and Caleb bought armbands, collected water pistols and headed into the maze to cause havoc. It seemed too much like a school excursion for us, so we sat patiently in the shade and waited for them. We noticed with interest that the sprinkler was on, watering the artificial grass. We debated the reasons for this but, nope, no idea. Ray and Caleb returned drenched but satisfied.
We were definitely peckish by now so we had to seriously find a winery to drink at…er… eat at. We were told by the waitress at the maze to check out the toilets at Laurence’s Winery.
It looked beautiful as we drove up the driveway with the perfectly manicured garden surrounding the estate. There was a sculptured tree with a big red rosy apple on it. I believe it represented temptation (the forbidden apple) as well as providing the fruit motif which wine production relies upon. That explained, we had a look in the middle of the lake. There, high up on a pole, was a gold lady on her tippy toes ready to dive into the water below. Try as we might, no explanation came to mind. We did admire her gluteus though.
We enjoyed a lovely lunch, some of their wine and admired their water bottles which were actually their wine bottles. I bought a bottle of Rose, the same that I had with lunch and you could also buy the empty bottles to take home for $5:00. The girl was very friendly and didn’t charge me for the empty bottle. Bless! Before we left, we needed to visit the toilets again as it was such a delightful experience and we left, very satisfied with our experiences.
We continued touring the area visiting more wineries, (I bought another delicious red wine), the chocolate factory (unbelievably I resisted), the fudge factory (I bought nougat) and then we made it to the town of Margaret River. It reminded me of Cowes on Philip Island, South Gippsland in Victoria. It was late by this time and the shops were closing.
We returned to Bunbury and dropped off Emma who probably had dinner waiting for her upstairs (Iain sounds like such a productive guy). We however, dropped by Red Rooster and bought a chicken.