saturday, december 16th

we started the day with one of my absolute favourites: the margaret river chocolate factory (= paradise!). yum yum, i simply loved this place as you could stuff yourself with chocolate for free! :) they had h u g e containers of chocolate samples (dark, milk & white) waiting to be eaten and that’s exactly what we did! too bad, i never know when to stop when it comes to chocolate (especially since regular aussie chocolate tastes gross!) and kept stuffing more and more of it till i felt sick. even this didn’t stop us from having more. we actually b o u g h t some truffles as well and enjoyed them with coffee outside.
the rest of the afternoon was similar: went to the cheese factory (and again ate till we got sick of cheese & crackers), an olive oil factory and visited 7 or 8 wineries i think. we were switching driving every other day and since vicky was sitting behind the wheel the day before it was my turn to drive. i tried to be good, went a bit lower on the wine and only had as many samples as my guilty conscience allowed to. after all, visiting wineries is not just about drinking. ha ha. they are quite pretty and fun to look at as they range from cute tiny little family wineries (where we were chatting with the owners) to huge companies with heaps of tourists running around.
we left margaret river in the late afternoon and hit the road again to go to Pemberton. on the way, only half hour from margaret river, we missed out on having a look at the lighthouse in augusta which marks the spot where the indian and the great southern oceans meet. that’s simply because, unfortunately, we forgot we were in western australia – the "everything closes at 5pm"-state but oh well. nobody distinguishes between these two oceans anyway, so who cares.
our backpackers in pemberton was o.k. actually, pretty nice but there were some weird creatures running around. (why would somebody go backpacking at the age of 70?!) before dinner (= pasta & pesto, that tasted wonderful after 2 days living on rice crackers) we went to see the so called "gloucester tree", a 60m tall tree you can climb using a ladder. vicky didn’t want to go up, i did and didn’t regret it for a second 'cause the view was rewarding but hey... i was really scared at some point. there was nothing to secure you whatsoever: if i had sweaty hands, got dizzy or simply slipped accidentally... i’d be dead by now. i reckon, thongs (= flip-flops) and a skirt are not the best climbing equipment either but i’ve survived :) the only thing i didn’t quite get is how crazy parents can make their little kids (there was a eleven year old girl climbing as well) do it...