Our two weeks in Margaret River have been amazing - a perfect combination of relaxing and lazing around and also plenty of outdoor activities (hiking, surfing, canoeing and swimming). Everything is nearby and everyone is so friendly and helpful. The only problem is that now we feel like we could spend a few more easy weeks here except everything is filled up for the summer holidays. All of the kids will be on their summer holidays until February but apparently around Christmas and New Year’s are the busiest.
One of the first things we did was have a belated Thanksgiving dinner – actually we had a whole Thanksgiving day where we cooked, watched a movie, and remembered everything and everyone for whom we were thankful. It was pretty easy to find everything we needed – the one confusing thing was the turkey. They have the turkey by sizes, size 32, 34, 36, 38, etc., not by weight. I am sure that somewhere there is a Rosetta stone to translate the sizes but there was nothing helpful on the wrapper. I figured if we just cooked it until we could pull a leg off, it would probably be good enough. It was and we had just enough leftovers to be sick of turkey after a few days.
There are loads of hiking trails around Margaret River to explore. We took one through a eucalyptus forest and where an old train line had run. Along the trail, in a dead fallen tree was supposed to be a geocache. We hadn’t done any geocaching since we had been with Erica in Hong Kong and we still had a little surfboard key ring that we needed to drop off.
This was easily the toughest geocache yet. The GPS on Dylan’s phone didn’t work well because we had weak reception and then eventually died! All we knew was that when it died we had been about 200 feet away from it and that it was in a dead tree. We walked up and down the section of trail we thought it might be, crashing through brush to various dead trees all the while slightly freaked out by the prospect of deadly spiders and snakes. Finally, as we were about to give up, we decided to try an upright dead tree (rather than one lying on the ground) and… bull’s eye! We were pretty excited and would have stayed to read the logbook longer except that we were quickly being chomped by bugs of all sorts. We learned a whole new respect for navigating through the Australia bush – it is wild!
As a family Christmas present, we signed the whole family up for a three-day surf lesson. Emma and David have been on the surfboards before but haven’t really had a formal lesson. Also, up until we went to Hawaii, neither of them were particularly excited about getting washed around in the waves and didn’t like getting saltwater in their mouths or eyes.
After going to the surf shop to get kitted up (Aussie for getting your gear on), we met instructor, Jarrod, at Red Gate beach. The beach was absolutely beautiful with powdery white sands and clear turquoise water. The waves were pretty small. Jarrod took the kids and got started with them and Dylan and I played in the small surf and watched the lesson. We were so glad we didn’t try to teach them – they listened to everything Jarrod said, did it without any complaining and had a great time. It was also so fun to watch them get excited about catching the waves.
Jarrod invited us to come down the beach early the next day as he was going to be teaching a bunch of kids in a holiday camp. He thought it might be fun for Emma and David to join in the fun. It was madness! There were about 25 kids with their surfboards all in the water at once with about five instructors racing from one to the other.
Dylan and I were on the standup boards that day, so we paddled away from the chaos out to the quieter water. The wind had picked up and as soon as I stood up on the board I was blown nearly out of the bay. It was no comfort when Dylan yelled out to remind me that the next land was Antarctica over 1,000 miles away. I managed to get back in and was feeling pretty good on the board until we started trying catch a wave. I kept running right off the end of the board as soon as the wave started pushing it, which I am sure was entertaining to watch.
I never ended up catching a wave, but I got some good practice. Dylan rode a few and made it look easy. By the end of the three days, Emma caught a few waves on her own and rode them all the way into the beach. David could catch them but once he stood up he’d be so excited he’d jump off the board!
There is a beautiful river that runs through Margaret River to the ocean (big surprise). We took a guided canoe trip up it to learn about local history (aboriginal and settlers), the natural history, to eat Australia wild food (kangaroo, emu, grub hummus, berries and seeds), to explore caves and to swim in the river. Our guide was a big friendly Aussie guy who cracked jokes left and right throughout his stories and clearly really enjoyed what he did.
One of the highlights was paddling through the paper trees on Boonaloongar Island in the middle of the river. This island, also called Sorry Island, was a sacred place for the aborigines. Apparently they would come to the island to unload all of the mistakes they had made or things they were sorry for. They would hug one of the paper trees, the trees would absorb all of the mistakes and they would be unburdened. The water in the river would rise and the trees would be submerged and the water would “wash” all of the mistakes away into the ocean. Needless to say, we all took turns hugging and unloading.
Another highlight was exploring the limestone caves about the river. Huge rooms went back into the stone and had been lived in for an extended period of time by shipwreck survivors in the early 1900’s. There was graffiti on the cave walls with dates of 1920 and 1913 written by the survivors. There was also a tunnel that went back through the cave and came out near the entrance. Dylan, Emma and David explored the tunnel (the diameter ranged between 2-3 feet) while I waited with the camera at the end. I was glad I did. It was pitch black and probably would have taken about 3 minutes but took closer to 5-6 minutes waiting for the others to make it through. Too claustrophobic!! The kids loved it and did it twice.
Christmas was a huge success. Santa found us and managed to fit down the chimney of the wood-burning stove. The kids played with toys, ate Christmas cookies and read books for most of the day. We took a little break and went down to the beach for a Christmas swim. The currents at the first beach we went to were too strong and started pulling the kids out almost as soon as we got in. We were all a little spooked so we moved on to another where it was much more mellow. It was a great Christmas celebration - Happy Holidays to all!
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