Margaret River – We LOVE it here!

We have been staying in Margaret River for about a week now, and it is SPECTACULAR! There is so much to do! I thought it was just be a river, and lots of grapes... but no! There is whole lot more! There is a multitude of touristy things here! And it is also a famous surfing area (who knew!). I looked into learning to surf, but the lessons cost just too much. However, despite the crushing disappointment of not being able to surf, we have been out and about and doing HEAPS of things over here!

One of the first things we did was to explore the caves in the area. There are many caves here, so we just picked three of the biggies. We saw Jewel Cave (Kristy’s favourite), Lake Cave (Megan’s fav) and Mammoth cave (my fav). We climbed up and down over 1,500 stairs (it felt like 15,000!) on Cave Day and my calf muscles were screaming the next day (and the day after, and the day after)! And... I received a cave injury – my arm scrapped on a stalactite! And in case you are wondering, yes, I have recovered. Question: does my stalactite injury beat Kristy’s previous tuna injury? I say YES! Vote 1 for Linda! On the same day as I was almost mortally wounded by a stalactite, Megan suffered a fern injury whilst she walked through the forest. I think she was being wimpy even mentioning it – as if that is on par with a stalactite injury – but I will let you all be the judge of the most exciting injury.

We also visited the BushShack brewery, where for $12 we could sample six different beers. The Passionfruit beer was YUM, as was the Mango beer and the strawberry one. The Chilli beer was undrinkable (and I like Chilli!), and they had ran out of the Chocolate Beer (unthinkable!). It was such fun, sitting in the sun, drinking our sample beers and kicking back. This was also the day that, as we were getting ourselves ready in the morning, I took my clothes to the shower block to get changed into, and Kristy changed her clothes in the tent, and when I came back, we were dressed in almost identical outfits! We had on black shorts, and black and white striped t-shirts! Megan couldn’t stop laughing. We took a photo (it’s on FaceBook) and when Kristy saw how she looked in the photo, she changed immediately – because she looked like she was 20 kilo’s heavier than she actually is! It is one of my fav pics of her – because it soooo doesn’t look like her body! It looks like Kristy’s head has been put on a pregnant woman’s torso! Yes Mel, you have told us never to buy horizontal stripes, and I don’t think Kristy will be buying them again.

After the BeerShack Brewery, we headed over to see a Sheep Shearing display. It was actually quite good, and interesting for me who has had limited exposure to the intricacies of sheep and the shearing of aforementioned animal. The guy who was heading up the display was a real aussie larrikin, and he liked to pick people from the audience to come on up and help him. As myself, Megan and Kristy were pretty much the only ones who were under 80 years of age, we got picked on a bit. Megan and I were CRINGING, and we tried to hide at the back everytime he wanted a ‘volunteer’. Kristy was loving it, and she wanted to be picked all the time, so she would push her way to the front. I was the first person to be picked, and he picked me to be his Roustabout – someone who sweeps up the left over sheep wool after the shearing has occurred. Despite being a Leo, I do not like being in the limelight. I think that the guy who was running the shearing display liked Megan – he kept looking at her. When I told her this, she said, “He’s only human.”

Kristy and Megan also got chosen to go up the front and feed the baby lambs. Megan’s stonewall face reflected her exact feelings of being up the front. I took a photo of that stonewall face, before she had remembered to put on her ‘audience’ face. Then a boy lamb was handed to Kristy and then shearer showed everyone it’s ‘maleness’, and even got the old ladies to tweek the doodle! They were shocked... and they loved it! Poor Megan, though, she didn’t get a chance to tweek the doodle.

Kristy and I took ourselves off to the Eagle Farm (Megan wanted some well earned ‘alone’ time). We arrived at the Eagle Farm (a self-funded place for injury eagles) in plenty of time because we wanted the opportunity to have a raptor sit on our arm (as advertised). And as it turns out, we were the ONLY ones there, watching the flying display! The whole display was done just for Kristy and I! And it was so exciting having an eagle sit on my arm (big glove on the arm first, of course). I know you have heard the term ‘eagle-eyed, and now I will tell you why that term is used: If a wedge tailed eagle could read, it could read the head-lines of a newspaper over 1 kilometre away. There you are – a bit of trivia for you. You can thank me later for that.

I think it was the night after the eagle farm, when we were all sitting in the tent, having a few drinks (Nicole had just left and gone to Perth– she ran out of money) when Kristy looked over at me and said that the little creases in my forehead looked like ‘in-built’ devil horns. Megan and I laughed and said, “I think you mean ‘built-in’, not in-built”. Then Kristy said to us (in her Sponge-Bob-Cranky-Pants voice), “It’s not my fault I say things wrong, I have HDD!” Who knew that HDD was the new ADD????!!!! Ahhh, Kristy, you bring me so many smiles.

There appears to be less mosquito’s here in Margaret River than in Esperance, however that hasn’t stopped Kristy from spraying fly spray around like it was a cheap perfume. It is a brave mozzie that dares to enter our tent! However, I wish Kristy would wait until Megan and I had LEFT the tent before she started spraying, as we are ambush fumigated when we least expect it. In any event, I suppose we should be grateful because, despite our burning throats and stinging eyes, we are free of mosquito bites!

We looked in an Antique shop yesterday. It had a great sign behind the counter that said: “That was lovely, but I need to scream now”.

Oh, oh, oh, and we went to the Chocolate Factory, the Fudge Factory, the Nougat Factory, the Cheese Factory and Muesli Factory (thought we better add some healthy in there). And they all had FREE tastings. You should have seen Kristy and Megan at the Chocolate Factory. They took HANDFULS of the free samples. And I mean BIG HANDFULS! And over and over again BIG HANDFULS! I think that Kristy believes that because the samples are free it doesn’t count on the diet. I think I would also like to believe that. Over the last 2 days we have eaten quite a lot of free cheese, chocolate, muesli, fudge, nuts, biscuits, nougat, jams and lollies (OMG, the Candy Cow!!!!). Not to mention the wine tastings!

Ahhh, Margaret River, we have also liked swimming at your beaches. The other night we went to the beach to watch the sunset – beautiful. Kristy knows that Ronnie is gonna love another sunset photo to add to her collection. T

Last night we headed out to the much acclaimed Margaret River Fiesta, but unfortunately for us, it was more like a siesta than a fiesta. And is there something in the water here at Margaret River? It appears that every second person is either pregnant or pushing a pram! That means the Fiesta was quite family orientated. We saw everything once, ate some of those dutch pancakes (ummmm – delicious!) and left to go back to the tent and drink the wine we had purchased earlier – Howling Wolf – very good!

We came back to our site to discover that we were now camped next to a Muppet. But it is a naughty Muppet – she is a beer drinking, Windfield smoking Muppet, and is here having a dirty weekend with her boyfriend! She has a VERY high-pitched voice, and when we were sitting in our tent all we could hear was her Muppet voice (mixed in with the music they were playing – The Cat’s in the Cradle – WTF?). Having said that, this is and example of what they heard coming from our tent:

Kristy to Linda: Babe, can you rub it? Go harder, go harder. It’s getting bigger I think. Push in harder. Yeahhhhhh, that’s gooood. (This was when I was massaging a knot out of Kristy’s back).

Megan to Kristy: You need more drugs, the other drugs aren’t working for you. Here, sniff this. (Kristy has sinus issues).

And... guess what...? For me and Megan, the Dukan diet is O.V.E.R!!!

Yes, it is true, after almost six weeks of being on the Dukan diet, I have left it for greener (and yummier) pastures. I have moved on from eating primarily only 2 food groups – meat (low-fat) and dairy (no-fat), and have now added the following food groups to my diet – vegetables, fruit, chocolate and fudge. Megan is with me on this. Only Kristy is resisting the call of sugar, unless, of course, it is a free sample (although I am sure I saw her earlier, hiding behind the van, scoffing down a coconut ice fudge).

Kristy is the skinniest of our little camping trio (Nicole has left us), and the Dukan diet really worked for her. But me, no, I lost hardly anything, so I figure, why bother? This morning I had a toasted fruit muffin with banana and strawberries and I think my mouth thought it had died and gone to heaven (It’s been a while since I have eaten fruit).

Anyway, it’s all good, because now I’m on the Vodka diet, and I have already lost two days.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!