Friday 25 September 2015

Perth, Margaret River, and Cowaramup (Australia)

We flew from Singapore at 8 o'clock in the evening and arrived at Sydney airport at around 6 am local time with sleepy heads on us. Luckily, there was a shuttle buses that took us straight from the airport to right outside the door of our hostel, where we landed at around 9 o'clock. We spent most of our first day in Sydney walking around the main city area and sitting in a park (I can't remember the name) overlooking Farm Cove with the harbour and the opera house in the background. The next morning we headed on a free walking tour of the city that took us all around the main sights including the Sydney Harbour, the opera house, and the Rocks. In the middle of the tour, we stopped for a break in Australia Square and happened to bump into the one and only Alf Stewart (yea, I know that's not his real name)! It's not lost on us that the chances of meeting such a famous Australian face on our first day in the country are probably fairly slim. We also met another familiar face in Sydney in the form of Charlie Robinson, an old friend of ours from our days in UCD. For the next couple of days, we stayed with some relatives of mine who live in the suburbs, and had a big family barbeque on the first night there, where we got to meet some distant cousins who really made us feel part of the Australian Purcell family! After another day of exploring the city (including a walk around Darling Harbour), and another Purcell family dinner, we flew to Perth. We stayed in a house in the Perth suburbs (we booked it on AirBnB) for three days. On our first day there, we drove our rented car to Caversham Wildlife Park, located around half an hour outside Perth city centre, where we got to meet-and-greet kangaroos, koala bears, and lots of other Aussie animals. After a few hours at the park, we headed to Freemantle for some fish and chips (the 'best in WA' apparently) and sat on he beach to watch the sun set over the Indian Ocean (cue vomiting). The next day we headed back to Freemantle for a tour of the former prison there, which was the home of thousands of convicts sent to Australia from the UK and Ireland. The tours we went on in the prison brought us into all the main areas, like the exercise yard, cells, kitchen, death row, and the gallows. After a walk around the famous Freemantle market, we headed back to Perth for a walk around Kings Park where we got an impressive night-view of the city and the Swan River. After our few days in Perth were finished, we headed south for a two-day trip to Margaret River. The drive from Perth took around 4 hours, and the road brought us right through the heart of wine-making country, with acres of vineyards on either side of us as we drove into the town. After arriving in Margaret River, we took a walk through a wood near our hostel to the river itself, and went for fish and chips in a local pub afterwards. The next morning we hit the road to Lake Cave (located just off Cave Road, of course), one of many caves in the area but supposedly the best (and the highest-rated attraction in Margaret River on TripAdvisor). The cave didn't disappoint. After walking the steep steps down to the cave, we were met with spectacular views as the stalagmites and other formations in the cave reflected off the water of the lake inside. After coming back up to daylight after the hour-long tour, we pretended to be cultured and headed to a free wine-tasting in one of the wineries in the area (there are over 120 of them, and the ones with 'cellar doors' signs offer free wine tastings).
On our way back to our hostel, we stopped at an olive farm and a chocolate factory, and paid a visit to a small town called Cowaramup, which is an atypical town with an interesting history. Situated in the heart of Margaret River's wine region, Cowaramup was initially formed as a 'group settlement scheme' to promote dairy production and to populate the high-rainfall area of the south-west in the mid-1920s. Families that moved to the area were given grants of around 160 acres to farm. Eventually someone copped on to the fact that it might be a good place to grow grapes and make wine, and thus the first commercial winery in the area was opened in 1967, after which the area eventually developed into the prime wine-making spot it is today. At a quick glance driving through Cowaramup, the town looks normal enough, but with a second look the slightly strange and definitely unique trait of this town is obvious. Scattered around the town, on the pavements of the main street and on the green areas of the small park in the town ('Pioneer Park'), are 42 fibreglass, life-size cow sculptures. To make this cow-related story even weirder, the fake cows were unveiled to the general public on July 15th, 2012, which so-happened to be International Cow Appreciation Day (yes, that does exist). In addition to the cow sculptures, the town also holds the record for the most people dressed as cows (1,352 to be specific). As a result of this apparent obsession with cows in Cowaramup (or the difficulty in pronouncing it's name), Cowaramup is affectionately referred to by the locals as Cowtown. Even more weirdly, the name Cowaramup actually has nothing to do with cows, but is supposedly based on the Aboriginal word 'cowara', which means 'purple-crowned lorikeet' (a bird). There is also a large gold-coloured cow sculpture called 'free as a cow' in Pioneer Park in the town, but I won't go into that.
Anyway, on our last day on Oz's west coast, we made the drive back up to Perth for our 'overnight' (4-hour) flight to Cairns.

Aisling with a couple of her marsupial friends



A koala bear tries to sleep while we annoy it

The inside grounds of Freemantle Prison


The gallows. 40 hangings were carried out at Freemantle Prison, which was the only lawful place of execution in Western Australia between 1888 and 1984. 

 
The view of the prison from one of the watchtowers

The front entrance to the prison

Freemantle Market

 

The blurry view of Perth city from King's Park
Next stop - Africa. One of the beaches that we stopped at on our way south to Margaret River from Perth.

Margaret River

Walking down to Lake Cave. The scene in the background shows trees above ground level with a steep drop into a large crater-like hole, where some ground collapsed above a part of the cave. This probably happened at least 500 years ago as indicated by the ages of some the trees in the collapsed area.

The gap to reach the cave is narrow and we were told to duck our heads to avoid hitting two rocks nicknamed 'headache rock' and 'splitting headache rock' 


 
The walkway through cave (on the extreme left) runs alongside the lake (just left of centre)

The walkway in the centre of the photo with the lake on either side

Stalagmites inside the cave 



The vines in one of the wineries in Margaret River.

With some of the cows in Cowaramup

In the green areas

In front of shops on the main street


Everywhere!


 

An old-style wooden church in Cowaramup

'Free as a cow'


 

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