Officially its called Margaret River...but you can call it Margs

After a busy Christmas period it was time to unwind.  And what better place than Margaret River? While it is well known for the various wine farms - there are currently around 215 grape growers and wine producers - we think the real attraction is the coastline.

We booked ourselves into a BnB and enjoyed a week of sunshine, beach time, cave exploring, and wine farm visiting bliss.

One of our favourite beaches to visit was Surfers Point.  From Surfers Point it is a short walk to the river mouth. And a short walk further north from there brought us to a quiet beach that we had to ourselves almost every time we were there.

Surfers Point

And a quiet beach all to ourselves

With a great sport for a cooling off swim

A discovery we made on our first day in Margaret River was the open air cinemas.  There are at least two that we found, and we ended up going to Cape Mentelle Vineyards for a picnic & movie.

Open air cinema, Cape Mentelle Vineyards

And then there was a lot more time spent taking long walks on deserted beaches. 

Another attraction in this region are the limestone caves.  We had visited Jewel Cave on our trip to Augusta (there are over 150 limestone caves between Yallingup and Augusta).  This time round we took a tour of Lake Cave.  This is one of the deepest caves in the region and also the only one with a permanent lake.

Lake Cave

Although not quite as warm as Perth, we did still have a few hot days in Margaret River. The middle of the day is too hot to be down on the beach, but we did find some great spots for exploring that were protected from the sun.

Avoiding the sun with a forest walk.

This is the Rails to Trails Walk / Cycle Trail
(It was once the railway line route)

And we also managed to visit Voyager Wine Estate.  It is a beautiful estate, but with wine tastings starting at $3 per wine we decided to skip the tastings and rather just enjoy a walk around the gardens.

And then it was time to head back to Perth and start getting ready for another working year.

We hope your year has gotten off to great start and wish everyone all the best for 2017!