Second Weekend: Second Great Southern Roadtrip

Sometimes after a laboriously long and physically tiring week of work, you just want to stay at home, relax, and not do anything (and if anything, it might include laundry). Other times, you realize where you are and feel as though you should take advantage of the day off and do something a bit more productive than just laundry. Saturday was my lazy-I-can't-be-bothered-to-do-anything day. Not even laundry. (Ok, but we were having water issues so I couldn't - I didn't even shower. Dam water: don't drink; Rain water: it's as clear as the isolated, unpolluted night's sky of flickering stars and twinkling galaxies that's as clean as the frogs that are ribbiting on top of the hose filling the tank aka drink up. But I did finish a book, have time to write, went for a walk, and video chatted with Dad in the morning, so not completely unproductive). It was a day completely to myself and despite it's apparent nothingness, I thoroughly enjoyed it and the warm March sun that kept me company. Sunday, though, was the day to do something, to take advantage of the roomie and I both having a day off and to counter the previous day's unproductiveness.

We debated between two options: the Porojunup Wine Festival featuring tastings from local wineries around Porojunup and grape stomping, or a trip to the beach. I thought it'd be cool to witness an annual regional event, but ultimately I couldn't really be bothered (leftover from yesterday's self-inflicted laziness?) so we decided it was so hot out that we'd probably be drunk or faint after one glass of wine. 

So decided: it was off to the coast! 

 Right before the turn off Muir Highway (cough, "highway") towards Denmark is West Cape Howe winery so we decided to check it out and had our own little wine festival by tasting some of their wines. The vines on the property are some of the oldest vines in the Western Australian state, although the winery recently moved to this location a few years ago. They also source some of their grapes from some of the oldest wines in Swan Valley by Perth. Older vines generally mean the grapes are reliably of more consistent quality. It was a nice tasting experience and along with their award winning Cabernet Sauvignon and Riesling, they had wines made from Tempranillo, Nebbiolo, and Sangiovese which aren't common around here.

As recommended by the guy at WCH, we eventually made it to MadFish Bay in Williams Bay National Park, and you could tell why the fish would go mad in this bay as two currents from opposing directions meet in the middle causing quite a strong pull. By the time we sat in the seriously soft sand, the warm weather had comfortably cooled and we were perfectly pleased with the over-an-hour outing*: our books, a picnic of snacks, cold Little Creatures Pilsner, the company, and beautiful photo opps.

*Alliteration is Amusing.

picnic in an esky

panarammmmma

madfish = currents converging

clear waters.

right state of mind: staring off into the ocean can soothe the soul. 

 The sun started to set behind us so we moved to Greens Pool, another more-popular beach we had heard about so that we could get a better view of the sunset.

Green's Pool

 We sat there with our books and staring off at the crashing waves until the bugs started to pester about.

For the second weekend in a row, for our second trip away, even just for the day, we commented on the car ride back that it was again nice to come back to our little, quiet and remote home in Frankland River. It's nice to participate in some bit of civilization and unwillingly fork-over a bit of the week's unused money. It's nice to have a day off to yourself, and it's sometimes even nicer to take advantage of that time to do something (Laundry, I'll get to you this week). It's hard to leave such panoramic, peaceful sights and think about the workload in the upcoming week, but we appreciate that time we get to experience them, as far away or as short lived as they may be. And yet, for the second week, we're still happy to go back to our isolated vineyard life: labor intensive, physical aches and pains, hearty meals, reclusiveness, spiders, mice and all. 

The Southern Ocean.

The day I first saw the Southern Ocean off the coastal town of Denmark was the cloudiest, chilliest, and darkest day I had seen since being in Australia. The water was still aquamarine-clear and so very surprisingly warm compared to the temperature of the air! There were a couple surfers and swimmers in the water, how very brave I thought, but Felix said why? they are going to get wet anyways. Good Point. We checked out a couple of the look out points for some photo opps and went on our way.

This one's for you Dad! warm, sunny Australia...

Southern Ocean. Check. 

(more pics to come...)

My First Real Australian Pie.

During our trip to Denmark, we had Australian pies for lunch at the “award winning” Denmark Bakery (it was actually award winning, I only put it in quotes as everywhere we went that day was award-winning.) I had a Vinda-Roo aka Curried Kangaroo with an appropriate kangaroo pastry cut out on top as I felt it was a pretty-Australian-even though-touristy-and-healthier-meat version and Felix had the traditional beefsteak, which really just tasted like mince meat. They were pretty tasty for my first real iconic Australian pie.

According to Wikipedia, because everyone loves and trusts Wikipedia, Australians eat 12 of these national hand-held snacks a year whereas New Zealanders eat 15 a year. 

First Weekend: First Great Southern Roadtrip

After a pretty work-intense, but not-that-bad-manageable first week of work, Friday finally arrived. We were presented with a variety of different options to start the weekend: pizza with Hunter and his family – a chance to get to know them outside of work; a night at the Rocky Gully Pub for a ticket-per-beer raffle and $10 burgers; or a trip to Denmark on the coast, about an hour away, depending on when we get out of work. By the time we got out of work and had our daily internet dose, we decided on the homemade pizza and would leave for Denmark the next morning. It was a good decision. The pizza was delicious and the hospitality was even more welcoming.

We left the next morning in our dinky car. I can’t complain, as we are lucky enough to have any sort of transportation out of this remoteness. The drive there wasn’t too bad, pretty straight forward, but our dinky little car was a bit of concern. It didn’t like to go above 100km (speed limit is 110km) and kept veering to the left. Talk about high-performance-vehicle-coughmonkeymiacough. It took us about an hour to get to Denmark and we were both pretty enthralled with the fact that we were in civilization again!

 Denmark seems like a nice town, pretty small with a  main street running through it, but a bit lively. The shops all seemed to be pretty eco-friendly: cafes with free-trade coffee, award winning bakeries, environmental agencies, boards with notices of shared-lifts and food drop offs, sustainably sourced and organic food stores…We had been told that Denmark was a bit alternative.  I like it.

It was drizzling rain, overcast and chilly, so we decided to skip the beach, obviously, and head towards the wineries, obviously. We followed the tourist scenic road signs with no clear direction of where it was going to take us, but we were on a loop road that seemed dotted with vineyards. We stopped at one called Kerriview (apparently, Frankland Estate used to own them, “disastrously - it was like making wine in the Sudan. But, we do still grow the grapes for their Pinot Noir”). The inside seemed like a safari lodge with a nice but typically-Australian-expensive food menu. We tasted their wines:  their bubbly was good, but there was no production facility on site and most of the wines were made elsewhere – in Frankland and in Swan Valley. That sort of lost its appeal of visiting a winery, and Felix thought the vines outside were probably just plastic for show.

  We next drove along the loop road onto Harewood Estate as I had thought I had heard of them and they were definitely acclimated with lots of awards. The wine maker, James Kellie, used to work at Howard Park/Mad Fish and is also the wine maker at Moombaki. I was driving so I didn’t taste too many and the lady informed us of a meadery where we could have a honey tasting so we set off to find that. We came across another winery (Duckett's Mill - apparently also James Kellie) with a sign for fudge and homemade cheese and since I was driving of course I veered towards the cheese. I LOVE CHEESE. The cheese was all made on site from local cows’ milk. They had their own label jams and mustards, a huge display fridge of different types of cheeses, cured meats, pates, and vacuum-sealed roasted vegetables. We tasted the cheeses on offer and decided to buy a Morroccan marinated feta along with a small bit of hot chorizo, slices of smoked kangaroo, and an emu pate – how very Australian!

We never found the meadery and ended up around the loop back in Denmark so we decided to check out the ocean. Despite the weather, it was a successful first road trip, filled with things that we like: a perfect outting! I feel as though although we may have missed a couple things we wanted to see, but we saw a lot and there are more weekends to go back.