4 July 2013 - Riverview Tourist Park, Margaret River, Western Australia

I woke to learn that Egypt’s President had been deposed in a military coup that should not be considered such, that the Australian cyclist Simon Gerrans was still wearing the yellow jersey, that Andy Murray was through to the semi-finals at Wimbledon and that rain was still hanging about the south east of Western Australia. I had a list of activities for the day not withstanding trying to sort out a small problem with our new battery charger.

Two days ago Chris had checked at the battery charging situation and had been rather dismayed to see the lights on our new CTEK charger were flashing in a circular pattern, unexplained in the manual. He quickly switched off the power source after checking with me that he was not imagining the light show, waited a while and then turned it back on. The lights now on were no longer mobile but different from what we considered normal. The fact is that the thick manual provided with the charger is in several dozen languages, and the English section, no more or less than the German, Arabic, French or whatever language, is a mere four pages offering very little in the way of troubleshooting. We do understand that in this modern world,  troubleshooting problems should now be directed to online mentors, and so we did. Two days later we received a response from a “call-centre” person perhaps out of India or Manila, who has probably been instructed that if the question seems a little too hard, simply say “It is broken and we will replace it”. Such is the consumer society we live in, but this just does not suit us. We are now down in Margaret River and unlike others who may think nothing of driving back up to Perth, we have moved on.

We emailed the one Australian agent, explained the situation once more and the fact that we had been unable to find any Western Australia dealer on the “store locator”. To his credit, he responded promptly and we are in the middle of exchanging emails to remedy the problem, however this is all a pain in the proverbial and one we could do without. We called the auto electrician who is currently residing at Advent Park where we stayed in Perth, and he did not express any concern about the danger of delaying the fix. That was some consolation. This is another case of “Watch this space”.  

It is less than a kilometre to the centre of Margaret River from our camp, and we could have walked but did not. We drove to the Information Centre and went in with our list of questions.

Here in this modern building we discovered that the Wine Tourism Showroom, a one stop shop for the one hundred and fifty vineyards and wineries of the area, is located here as well. This was on my list of the day’s to-dos but we found little new here for us.

We also learned that the Boranup Drive Lookout was some distance from Margaret River and could be incorporated into the trip planned for tomorrow.

The main street through Margaret River which doubles as the Bussel Highway is full of classy galleries, cafes, boutiques and all the shops you would expect in an average township, however they are all very smart and their wares match the very smart customers they strive to attract. Ice-creams sell for $5.50 a scoop, ladies’ haircuts start at $50 and diesel sells at 11cents a litre more than one hundred kilometres up the road. This is not the sort of town where simple people such as us should patronise. 

Having said that, we decided that since we were in this great wine region, we should shout ourselves a bottle of Margaret River wine. Rather than traipse from cellar door to cellar door, taste and reject and feel guilty at doing so, we went to the local liquor store and were soon deep in conversation with the nerdy looking owner or manager who really seemed to know his stuff. We examined the chardonnay labels, searching for the words “full bodied” without success and were told that this was very passe, that modern wine makers were catering for the fresh crisp wines the modern punter demanded, however he did have one wine here that should meet our taste. This was a Pemberton wine, 2010 vintage and just perfect for us. Interestingly Chris had been swotting up on Pemberton just last night and learned that Pemberton’s own wine industry, while much smaller than that of Margaret River, was winning awards and not to be sneezed at. I had thought we might invest in a bottle from here and another at Pemberton; invest probably being a misnomer. So we returned to the landcruiser bearing our bottle of plonk and the day’s newspaper.

It was still mid-morning and lunch was sitting ready in the eski, so we headed west, back along the road we travelled yesterday but going on further, out to Prevally Beach.  This stretch of the coastline has been host to many a surf competition, and Surfers Point at Prevally is the best known. 

Prevally also made the news in November 2011 when the Department of Environment and Conservation let so-called controlled burns get out of control, and fire destroyed 3400 hectares of land and about forty houses. No lives were lost but the loss of property was devastating and the scandal filled the headlines for some time.

Today we saw quite a large amount of new housing and even some under construction, perhaps still the reinstatement of those lost. The landscape reminded me a little of the bare skeletons of snow gums in the Victorian Alps, here on the coastal hills. Beach access is strictly by newly constructed stairs and boardwalks in an attempt to conserve and repair the stripped vegetation. It is not a pretty sight however we did appreciate the surf and those few brave sorts out in their wetsuits making the most of the conditions.  

We returned to camp and had our picnic in the caravan and dealt further with email correspondence concerning the charger.

The day had cleared, despite a couple of showers passing over during the morning. I was optimistic that the afternoon’s plan could be carried out. We donned our walking shoes, packed raincoats in the backpack and set off with our walking sticks, upstream across the Margaret River and into the forest.

The Ten Mile Brook Cycle and Walk Trail starts downstream at the northern end of the town and follows the river up to the Ten Mile Brook Dam, a walk in the summer of fifteen kilometres return. In the winter, the alternative trail takes one up and over, up and down, through the State Forest and National Park, presumably a pocket of the disjointed Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park, and by a longer route. It is true that we joined the trail upstream from the town thus shortening the distance, however we took the longer forest trail on the way out, and the river trail on the return.

It is a lovely walk through forest of Blackbutt, Jarrah and Marri eucaplyts, grass trees, bracken and a variety of other vegetation we have come to expect in this part of the world. Marri nuts, also known as “honky nuts” probably because they reveal their pale flesh after the outer skin has been gnawed off, littered the forest floor. Milling stripped much of this forest in the early part of last century, and even though some of the very old giants were left, most of the jarrah is regenerating and will take another one hundred years before it impresses as it did those early settlors. The trail follows the old route of the milling steam engines and as such, one might expect it to be much flatter than it is. All I can say is that those old steam engines had more puff than me! 

Tasmanian Blue Gum

A couple of hundred metres from the end of the track, we encountered a colony of Barnaby Black Cockatoos, perhaps a dozen, high in the trees above us, making such a racket in an unsuccessful attempt to frighten us away. This went to prove yet again that you do not need to venture too far away from the car park of reserves and the like to discover these wonderful and apparently endangered birds.

We soon arrived at the Rusden Picnic Site, so named for the settlor who was granted 160 hectares to develop a dairy farm on this spot back in the early 1920s as part of the Group Settlement Scheme mentioned yesterday. Here we learned of a tragedy that befell one of these settlor families, perhaps one of many, but surely the most horrific; in 1931 whilst walking home from school, two of the neighbour’s children were burned to death in one of the bush fires that so often threatened the livelihood and property of the region.

The picnic area is well laid out under a one hectare plantation of Tasmanian Blue Gums, purpose planted in 1967. In the summer they would provide excellent shade, today they just appeared scruffy with their strips of bark hanging everywhere.

Above this plot stands the compacted earth Ten Mile Brook Dam on the Margaret River, holding back a reservoir which covers 28 hectares at full capacity however like all dams visited during the past few weeks, it is currently far from full.

Ten Mile Brook Dam

It had taken us almost two hours to reach the dam wall and Chris was concerned about my ability to cope with the return. I assured him I was just fine, however had to confess to rather tired legs. So it was a bonus and a surprise to receive a call on our cellphone from my cousin Cy halfway back. It was lovely to hear from him again and offered an excellent opportunity for a rest. We are not used to spending time chatting on cellphones, only too aware of the horrendous cost of calls, however this seemed to be no problem for my young cousin and we passed at least ten minutes or more catching up yet again. He told us about the excellent market that was taking place on Sunday however we are too far south to turn around and head on through. For him and Maria, the distance may seem nothing, but then they do not understand our take on distance. We ended our call, still hoping to catch up before we left the area; perhaps he and Maria will blat through to Bridgetown at the beginning of next week on their motorbikes?

We walked the last few kilometres of the trail, the birds already heralding the end of the afternoon and the cold air coming down over us like a blanket. A bottle of wine awaited us and I can report that it was very good.