18th September Margaret River.

After a night of wind and rain the morning sun came as a bit of a surprise. Still quite cool with the temp around 12 degs,however we made sure we had our raincoats and headed off in the car to do some exploring. We  drove up up to Dunsborough stopping off for a walk to the mouth of the Margaret River.

Here we had to battle some strong wind gusts as we walked along the cliff and down to the river side.

On to Gracetown and to the beach where we walked up along the cliff top and came across the memorial to the nine people who had been killed by the cliff collapse back in 1996. The tragedy occurred when the local primary school was holding a surfing carnival and some of the family and friends were sheltering from a rain squall on the beach under the cliff when it collapsed and buried them .

The one and only survivor was found after two hours of digging.We were very moved by the memorial that had been erected to the memory of those lost.

We watched the kite surfers skimming across the rough seas as we headed back down to the car to drive up to Meelup beach where we had our lunch of bread rolls and some venison bought from the local farm along the way.This is a beautiful beach and on a summers days we imagined it would be very popular place for the family as it safe and protected from the wind. Alas today was cool with constant showers which we had to shelter from every now and again.

We visited the Ngilgi caves at Yallingup one of 300 hundred caves in the Geographe and Margaret River wine region between Cape Naturaliste and Cape Leeuwin. We didn’t venture too far as the tours would have taken too long and we had more places to visit.

It was back down the Caves Road where most of the 100 vineyards are situated. We stopped off at a few of the cellar doors and purchased some wine from Clairault vineyard. www.clairaultwines.com.au

The vineyards looked most impressive, very green with many of the vines beginning to sprout some leaves.

It was then back to the town to buy some provisions for the start of our journey heading east and towards our home state to rejoin our family and friends. However we still have a good few weeks of travel and at least 4000 km before we get there though. So far we have covered 19500 km since leaving home on May 29th.