Margaret River

After a big Christmas Day we threw whatever we thought we needed in a bag and drove to the airport. Our flight was the last one out at 11.15pm and the terminal was pretty quiet with nothing but McDonalds open – lucky we were full from Christmas Lunch! Doug and I boarded the plane for a largely un-eventful flight. We then jumped in our hire car (12.30am Perth time, 3.30am Melbourne time) and drove 3.5hrs down to Margaret River. By the time we got there (4am Perth time 7am Melbourne time!!) we were exhausted and just collapsed.

Day 1 officially started with a biiiiggg sleep in, we then headed to a café just down the road from our accommodation on the beach for brekky. We then ventured 40 minutes south to Hamelin Bay, the beach was beautiful but the main attraction is the wild stingrays. They're so friendly and come up right to the shoreline so I even got to pat a few of them! We then had a very quiet night at the local pub and an early night.

Day 2 we decided to go on a food & wine tour. The bus picked us up at 10am sharp and by 10.30am we had already had 3 glasses of wine! We ended up going to 4 wineries in total. We also had a lunch of locally made cheese, crocodile meat, smoked kangaroo (sooo yum) and other bushtucker berries etc. We then went to the dairy factory - with amazing cheese and icecream and finally a brewery for Doug. By the time we got home we were exhausted so Doug just made some lamb cutlets and we watched a movie.

Day 3 - the weather was PERFECT so we got ready for a beach day. We drove 40mins north to Smith's beach for a few hours and then decided to go to Eagle Bay Brewery for a yummy lunch. Doug then took us to one of the most spectacular beaches I've ever seen, being Castle Rock Beach. The water was sooo blue and the rocks were this amazing red colour. I sat down and read for a few hours and sent Doug off with a snorkel. He came back and advised me that he'd found a secret beach with no-one on it. We walked over what felt like 1,000 rocks and managed to get there. It was even more beautiful than the beach before it and we sat there until the sun went down

Day 4 - Unfortunately the weather wasn't great and we needed to check out at 10am. After a quick stop at the Margaret River Fudge Factory and Bussleton Jetty we made our way to Port Bouvard to see Brian's brother Colin and his wife Mandy - as we were going to be staying at their house in Perth for the next few days. We got there at 2.30pm, fully intending on it being a quick stop to pick up the keys and ended up staying there till 9pm before heading back to Perth.

- K x