Margaret River Trio, 17-21 August 2020

Temper Temper chocolate factory; ginger, chilli and other addictions; equal-opportunity Eagle Bay: microbrewery plus vineyard; escapee lilies at large; Commonage Road Food & Wine Trail

*While at Temper Temper Fine Chocolate Factory, why not visit the Margaret River region?

(*With acknowledgement to the oft-quoted: “While at Raffles, why not visit Singapore?”, attributed – to the best of my knowledge – to that famous hotel’s equally famous guest Noel Coward.)

#1 Temper Temper Fine Chocolate

Top of my agenda for any trip to the Margaret River region, 200km south of Perth WA, is to visit the Holy Grail of chocolate, Temper Temper.

Restocking my supply of chilli dark chocolate at Temper Temper

My own stocks were sadly, even desperately, low. I’d been eking out my supply of dark chilli chocolate that the family brought back from a recent camping trip to Taunton Farm, near Cowamarup – a bovine-themed village less tongue-twistingly known as Cowtown.

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This sweet little business is located at Seven Seas Tea on the high street of Cowtown. Georgia (pictured four times below) and Roz are the two chocolatieres, and – despite being kept extremely busy filling both the store’s physical shelves and their online orders – they obviously love their job. Who wouldn’t?

According to their website, Georgia worked as a professional chef for six years until she catered for Roz’s 2015 wedding in New South Wales. They clicked at once, did a course together in Melbourne, moved the business to Margaret River, WA, and winged it from there.

Like a beautiful white witch hovering over her heavenly cauldron, Georgia was busy dipping soft ginger into a deep bowl of darkly glistening liquid chocolate. One bite, and we were sold.

I’m addicted to ginger at the best of times, and these succulent morsels were a lot less sugary than the stuff I score at The Source Bulkfoods in Ocean Keys shopping centre, just up the road from where we live in Iluka, Joondalup. One can no doubt overdo it – and I do, believe me – but even crystallised ginger is not such a bad choice of treat.

Though it sounds too good to be true, and I’ve had my doubts over the recent years of debate, it turns out that dark chocolate is an anti-oxidant-rich superfood that’s actually very good for you.

Here’s why that’s true: (1) its flavonols reduce blood pressure, lessening the risk of stroke while improving blood flow in general and to the brain in particular; (2) cocoa butter is rich is healthy fats and polyphenols, lowering both total and LDL cholesterol and reducing inflammation; (3) it’s wonderful for skin health, providing protection against sun-damage, and (4) it seems also to boost vision.

One caveat – it’s got to be the dark stuff, at least 70-percent cacao. It also helps if you buy the kind of quality they make at Temper Temper, organic and sugar-free. (So, no… that Snickers bar won’t do the trick.)

I like my choccy paired with other superfood ingredients like chilli, ginger or whole nuts. (As for Rocky Road, I don’t think pink marshmallows make the grade as a superfood.)

Adventurous indeed! – but it’s the ginger, togarashi and black sesame dark chocolate that’s going to do the body good

#2 Eagle Bay Brewery Company

Not just beer, but wine too – something for everyone!

I love a local recommendation. Eagle Bay Brewery Company was suggested to us by some lovely friends of the family here, Mark and Katie, who have a holiday house at Eagle Bay. (Apart from the brewery, Katie also recommended: Meelup Farmhouse, gorgeous for breakfast or lunch (and perhaps dinner on the weekends); Swings & Roundabouts; Cherubino Winery, which sells only from its cellar door; and Amelia Park Winery, closer to Margaret River town.)

Eagle Bay beer is made with just four ingredients, according to the website: rainwater, malted barley, yeast and hops; and the production is powered by sunshine. (Isn’t that nice!) For once, I couldn’t choose a favourite – they were all great.

Nice thing about the family-owned and family-run Eagle Bay micro-brewery is that it’s also home to a vineyard. So, it produces not only fresh batches of outstandingly delicious beers*, but also handcrafted wines. As you can see (below), the lovely restaurant setting overlooks rolling lawns and working farmlands to Cape Naturaliste and the Indian Ocean.

Friendly staff and a relaxed vibe made you feel you could linger there all afternoon over a couple more drinks – that is, if you didn’t have to drive home to Busselton.

A balanced three-course lunch: beer, olives and potato fries

I still get a thrill to see flocks of psittocene birds – either white cockatoos (?), or these pretty pink and grey galahs – wherever I go in WA. This lot were lunching on the grass at the Eagle Bay Brewery Co. restaurant.

These flowers grow wild in the WA countryside – we called them arum lilies in South Africa

Beautiful as they are, these arum or calla lilies are a declared pest in WA. The story goes that they were imported by South Africans as garden plants, and later “escaped” into the countryside… a bit like Moondyne Joe. (My apologies on behalf of all South Africans everywhere – and we certainly are everywhere.)

#3 Commonage Road Food & Wine Trail

It’s a recurrent theme, but I’ll say it again – I can’t imagine ever getting tired of Margaret River. There’s just so much to do in the region.

Just by chance, I happened to spy a small leaflet promoting the 10km Commonage Road Food & Wine Trail, which starts around 3km from the centre of Dunsborough.

First on the list is Whole Food Market – and the excited Roy can’t wait to go in!

First up on a list of nine attractions is the Whole Food Market (68 Commonage Road). Towards the rear of the shop, a trio of young women were weighing and measuring various legumes, nuts, grains, dried fruit and more from all over the globe – but there’s also the option to “scoop and weigh” various items yourself.

As Georgia – yes, another Georgia, unless I got her name wrong (and if so, I’m sincerely sorry!) – rang up my organic 70-percent dark chocolate drops, self-dispensed jar of local organic olive oil, and ginger in dark chocolate (yet more of this addictive stuff), she explained that they’d moved to this bigger shop-front just recently, and that business was booming. Good on them!

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Number 2 is Corrynne’s Skincare at (86 Commonage Road), part of The Soap Factory. Here, Corrynne concocts all manner of deliciously fragrant unguents and potions for the face and the body, exquisitely scented with essential oils.

Below is Jacquie, graciously posing for me next to the soap. She says they also have an outlet at Freemantle Markets that stocks a limited range of their products.

I dragged myself away with a quartet of aromatic soaps, a bottle of Australian virgin almond oil, a delectable little pot of lip balm and three steam-distilled essential oils: lemongrass, grapefruit and leaf of clove (the first two Australian, the last from India).

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Next time we’re in the area, I look forward to further adventures along Commonage Road. Maybe not number 3 – Simmo’s Ice Cream – but definitely some of the others: