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May 2003
Letters from Wongan Hills | |
|  | | The Watts family at Prevelly Beach |
| | Sarah Watts talks about holidays in Western Australia in her latest 'Life in Wongan Hills' article...
Story by
Sarah Watts
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| | Western Australia is one of the best places in the world for taking holidays. From the northerly regions of the Kimberly (a region of 420,000 square kilometres) to the southerly aspects of Esperence and Albany, Western Australia has it all, beaches, mountains, rainforests, deserts, and the bush. You can experience holidays including fishing, diving, swimming with Whale sharks in Exmouth, bush-walking, wine-tasting, visiting gold mining towns, off-roading in 4x4s and so on.
Recently my Mum and Step-Dad came for their first trip to WA on a 3 week visit. As Kevin, the girls and I haven’t had chance to do much travelling, we grabbed the chance to take a short break down to the Margaret River in Western Australia with the parents. We had heard many good reports about this region, in particular that it is a major wine-producing area. Margaret River is situated just under 300km South of Perth and normally takes about 3.5 hours of driving to get there. As we were travelling from Wongan Hills we had another 184 km on top so it was a pretty long journey, especially with the two girls. Nevertheless, with a couple of stops along the way, and the journey being so interesting the time seemed to fly by. We travelled through major towns called Mandurah, Bunbury and Bussleton and finally to our destination at the Margaret's Beach Resort about 10km from the town of Margaret River.
The resort was only a 5 minute walk to Prevelly Beach and this proved to be the focal point for the afternoons with the girls looking for shells and crabs. As you can imagine the beaches of the Indian Ocean are pristine, extremely inviting and Autumn or not, were there to be taken advantage of. Around the bay there was an international Saloman Surfing competition taking place and we spent a short time watching the contestants compete against the waves.
There are many wineries in this area and as we only had a 4 day break, managed only to visit 2 wineries. Cape Lavender was a fascinating place to visit. There were acres upon acres of lavender beds with all types of lavender species, wonderful fragrances filling the air and it was the most peaceful and tranquil place to visit. Over the past few years they have incorporated lavender into their wines and we bought several bottles of their White Sparkling wine was delicious and extremely moreish!!
Probably the most popular family trip we took was to the Margaret River Chocolate Factory – a heaven if ever there was one!! As I have no willpower at all when it comes to chocolate, sampled several spoonfuls then bought some of the chocolates on display as well as a big bag of dark chocolate buttons. We had a great afternoon and definitely a place to return to in the future. There is so much to see in the Margaret River, we only scratched the surface on our short trip, but it is awe-inspiring to realise that this is only a small part of Western Australia and there will be many other places for us to experience in the coming years.
Sarah Watts
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