Travels with Verne and Roy

WA Road Trip: Part Five – Margaret River Vintage Wine Tour

We had two good reasons for booking a full-day tour: Roy was sick up and fed of driving, and I was sorrowful about having been driven past so many vineyards without stopping at a single cellar door.

Glenn, our guide for the day and also the driver of the 13-seater bus, arrived bright and early at our motel on a cloudy, cool morning that blossomed into the most perfect blue-sky day. And, with a total of nine stops between the 10am hotel pickup and 5.30pm drop-off times, our $115 each (including lunch) was good value.

Roy, happily positioned at the passenger door after five long days at the wheel

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WA Road Trip: Part Four – Margaret River

Having travelled west from Albany along the southern coast of West Australia for about three-and-a-half hours, we decided (or, to be more specific, I requested fervently and Roy capitulated) to turn left and south to Augusta*, rather than right to Margaret River. Our destination? Cape Leeuwin, a spectacular spot with a lofty and photogenic lighthouse that dates from 1895.

* You can stop in Augusta for a coffee at the Deckchair (or Café Deckchair Gourmet), as we did, but be warned that if you order only one it might cost you $6 instead of the listed $5 price. That’s what happened to Roy. I needed to check my email, you see, but I was already jittery-full of coffee, and the minimum order for Wi-Fi access was $6. I suppose they’re sick of tapwater-sipping backpackers occupying prime chair-space…

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WA Road Trip: Part Three – Hyden to Albany

Both Albany and neighbouring Denmark (50-odd kilometres to the west) feature picturesque bay after halcyonic headland after idyllic, white-sand beach, with one magnificent vista after another. We’d hardly driven into town before I’d resolved to come back here one day for a longer stay.

How completely different this coast was from the countryside we’d travelled through for four hours to get here, following the route through country towns Kulin, Lake Grace, Dumbleyung (watch out for the Dumbleyung Dunny!) and Katanning to the Chester Pass Road.

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WA Road Trip: Part 2 – Wave Rock, Mad Dogs and Englishmen

I have no experience of mad dogs, but I do of Englishmen (being married to one) – and it’s simply not true that they go out in the midday sun. Not often, anyway, and certainly not by choice.

It was too early to check into the Wave Rock Motel in the town of Hyden (population 400), so, in 36-degree noonday heat, Roy drove straight through to the site of the famous rock itself, 4km further on.

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WA Road Trip: Part One – Perth to Hyden and Wave Rock

Despite my being equipped with the latest, updated and fully revised Western Australia map book, Roy utterly disrespects my map-reading skills. He sneers when I turn maps sideways or upside–down, and rudely calls me Henrietta The Navigator.

A useful tool – in someone else’s hands, apparently

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Western Australia Road Trip – Prologue

After three weeks with the family in Perth, I was itching to shake off suburbia and make a beeline for the bush.

In order to make this happen, I started speaking, in deeply wistful terms, about the simple joys of camping – how pleasurable it would be to travel self-sufficiently, to be able to stop on a whim, to cook over open fires as our forefathers did, to be at one with the glorious outdoors!

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My Coral Coast Run, Perth WA

Nowadays, my regular morning run finds me on a stunningly beautiful trail along the southernmost part of Western Australia’s Coral Coast. So distinctively itself, it has an unforgettable sense of place and reminds me of absolutely nowhere else I’ve been or seen.

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Lake Leschenaultia… yes, it’s quite a mouthful

It’s been many years since I last spent the better part of a day at the beach, swimming and picnicking. Sand-fringed Lake Leschenaultia is located in Chidlow, in the Perth Hills, in the Shire of Mundaring (sounds distinctly hobbity, doesn’t it?), only a 45-minute drive from the city of Perth.

In case you were wondering what the excuse was to drag Roy out of his comfort zone, it was granddaughter Holly’s third birthday today.

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Christmas in Perth

Of course, Christmas is all about celebrating family. (Unless you happen to be a Christian, in which case it might be about celebrating something else.)

So here I am with Roy, appropriately ensconced in the bosom of our family for the next month and more. We have our own self-contained guest suite – sounds a bit better than granny-flat, doesn’t it? – in the house of son Carl and his wife Carrie in Iluka, 30km north of central Perth, Western Australia.

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Mia, the Christmas Fairy

How many Christmas cards did you get this year? I mean the genuine analogue kind: a festive card sealed in an envelope and delivered by the postman/person. Fewer than last year, I’d guess – and maybe a lot fewer than five or 10 years ago.

If you received one from Roy and Verne, custom-designed and postmarked Singapore, I must confess it had little to do with me. I would have joined the rest of the world and given up on this particular chore a long time ago. Roy, however, is not only CEO of household administration, but also a staunch traditionalist*.

* A jolly good thing when it comes to platinum wedding anniversaries and such. Roy has never forgotten our anniversary. When I did, once – around 15 years ago? – I was allowed to live, perhaps only so as to rue that dark day for the rest of my life.

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Historic South of France, June 2024, Part 3: Arles and Béziers

Marseillan Port Highlights, 2-29 June, Part 2 – Oysters & Noilly Prat

Marseillan Port, 2-29 June 2024, Part 1

Two Weeks in England, 15-30 May 2024, Part 3 – East Sussex and London

Two Weeks in England, 15-30 May 2024, Part 2 – Merseyside

Two Weeks in England, 15-30 May 2024, Part 1

WA Road Trip: Part Five – Margaret River Vintage Wine Tour

WA Road Trip: Part Four – Margaret River

WA Road Trip: Part Three – Hyden to Albany

WA Road Trip: Part 2 – Wave Rock, Mad Dogs and Englishmen

WA Road Trip: Part One – Perth to Hyden and Wave Rock

Western Australia Road Trip – Prologue

My Coral Coast Run, Perth WA

Lake Leschenaultia… yes, it’s quite a mouthful

Christmas in Perth

Mia, the Christmas Fairy