I arrived in Margaret River on 15th February and booked into The Quality Inn (same price as the local hostels). It was an above average motel with very colourful and loud birds outside my room.

Margaret River itself is an unremarkable small town. However, it has a lot of interesting places nearby. About 35km south, just outside the town of Augusta, is the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse. It is located on a headland that is the most south westerly point on the Australian mainland.

It is still a working lighthouse but is it now fully automated. Between 1895 and 1982 it was manually operated by a team of 3 lighthouse keepers who lived in the cottages on site. The light was rotated by a clockwork mechanism which required winding everyday. The light was provided by a burner that required 35 litres of kerosene a day. This had to be manually brought up the 186 steps to the top of the lighthouse. The keepers avoided having to do all the work by getting the regular flow of visitors to carry a can in return for a view out of the top. Today it is powered by a couple of halogen bulbs that are due to be upgraded to LED equivalents next month.

Cape Leeuwin is also the point where the Southern Ocean meets the Indian Ocean and there is a point where you can see the waves from both oceans meeting. Apologies my photography skills were not up to capturing this detail.

The town of Margaret River is in land. Margaret River itself joins the Indian ocean at Prevelly – about 10km due west.

It is a popular surfing location. I’ve never got into surfing myself. It seems to involve a lot of waiting around doing nothing.

Prevelly also has several public sculptures, including the lady with green pubes.

Margaret River is probably best known for its vineyards, there are over 140 in the region. You could spend all of your time touring the vineyards and sampling their products. I only visited a few as couldn’t drink as I was driving. My favourite was Cape Mentelle.  (www.capementelle.com.au)

The vineyard was established in 1970 by the Hohnen brothers and was one of the first in the region. Despite the challenges of importing delicate French wine making equipment (most of the roads were still dirt) the vineyard was successful. Its success was confirmed when it won the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy (Australia’s most prestigious wine award) in 1983 and 1984. The original founders have now moved on (David Hohnen went on to establish the Cloudy Bay vineyard in New Zealand in 1985). It is now the smallest vineyard in the Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton group and many of the staff are French.

When I visited in mid February, they were preparing to start the grape harvest the following week. Margaret River is lucky in that its vines have less vulnerabilities than other vineyards, but it does have one unique problem. The ripe grapes are a favourite of the Silvereye bird that migrates up from Tasmania. Up until recently there was little that could be done to stop this and the vineyards had to put up with this significant loss every year. In recent years technological innovation has made it cost effective to cover the vines with nets. A massive task normally undertaken a month or less before harvest (Bird netting in Margaret River)

Although not usually a big red wine fan, I do like their Cabernet Sauvignon. I also enjoyed their open air cinema.

My final night in Margaret River coincided with their regular night market – food vendors, live music in a local park on a warm evening.

After an enjoyable 3 nights in Margaret River I headed north to take in a couple of things I missed on the way down – Busselton and Pendleton.