Firstly, I apologise for being so slack in my blog writing!
The last few weeks I have been resting, chilling and getting my head around my next journey/adventure.
It’s been great being here and watching the season change from spring towards summer. So many beautiful flowers everywhere and I have to say that Australia smells lush, I think it’s the eucalyptus trees and other fabulous herbal smelling plants and shrubs.
Rebecca and Chris have been busy getting the garden ready for the summer, when they spend most of their time outside. Rebecca has been planting and germinating seeds, all of the plants, shrubs are native to Australia which means they not only look fab they also smell great! Chris is building a large TV cabinet outside, which is looking fabulous, the pool looks fab but is still a little too chilly for me, Chris goes in after his workout, brave man! 💙
Last week it was very warm around 29 degrees then it’s dropped back down to around 22-24, and still cool at night, which is lovely! It will steadily climb back upwards over the next month😍
I’ve been back to the pool and that’s going well. The pool temperature has been lowered, which I’m sure will be fabulous in the full summer heat but is a little nippy at the moment 🥶 It’s OK once you get going just the initial shock when you get in! (Still not as cold as Rebecca & Chris’s pool!)
The pain I had in my glute, leg area seems to have gone away, although this might be due to less walking, however it’s nice to be free of it.
Rebecca and I had a short little trip down to Margaret River at the beginning of November. It was lush!
We left early on Sunday morning to drive down to a small place on the coast called Dunsborough. I have been past it before but never stopped. We had booked a table at a little Café by the beach for breakfast/Brunch. Sora Café was lovely, very trendy, Instagramable & popular!
The food was yummy, a slight Japanese vibe.
Dunsborough beach was fabulous, pretty busy, but it was a Sunday morning. The beach wasn’t huge but had lots of sandbanks and shallow water for paddling. I thought it was very pretty, definitely somewhere to come back to in the summer.
What’s really fabulous here is that the beach areas are so well maintained, and also very well protected. There are no beach bars or homes with direct beach access. The beaches are clean and looked after by everyone. There are clean, free toilets and showers just off the beach.
This is a theme throughout Australia on the coast and at all of their national parks and places of interest.
Rebecca and I had a walk along the beach then a drive through the town looking and admiring all the beautiful houses. I love that every house is different, old, new, big, small, modern, retro.
From here we drove towards Margaret River and stopped at a Winery we have visited before which is beautiful and makes great wine!
Vasse Felix was established in 1967 after studies revealed that the area around Margaret River had very similar climate to Bordeaux. Vasse Felix is the founding winery in the area.
We enjoyed a glass of wine, Rosé for me and a Chardonnay for Rebecca. We had a look around the beautiful grounds and also at the exhibition in the gallery.
The current exhibition was called IQTA24 Tjukurrpa on Fabrics. It showcases 12 artists from Ikuntji Artists.
The artists have reimagined Dreaming Stories into fabric designs, as the designs are repeated down the length of the fabric, so too are the stories being repeated, strengthened and continued into the future.
The designs and stories were amazing.
After our lovely stop in Vasse Felix and a purchase of 2 bottles of delicious Rosé we drove into Margaret River and to our accommodation for the night.
The accommodation was right in town and was a great little place on the ground floor with an outside seating area. Perfect for our 1 night. We dropped off our bags and then wandered into town. To be fair we only wandered about briefly before getting sidetracked by a sign offering free food with your drink purchase! An offer we simply couldn’t refuse.
The bar was a cute little Tapas place and you got a sample of Tapas with your drinks!
We opted for a delicious coconut margarita to start…OMG 😍😋 So good! The little tapas dishes were yummy as well. We sat on the terrace watching the world go by chatting and chilling, we ordered a second drink, a Lemoncello Spritz, nice but not as good as the Coconut Margaritas!
Opposite the bar was another bar, a more traditional pub, playing live music so we popped across to have a listen. Great music, covers of some classics, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, some other cool tunes, all great fun. We stayed for a while then realised we were hungry, the little tapas dishes weren’t quite enough! The pub wasn’t serving food for another couple of hours, so we opted for a table picnic back at the hotel with some rosé. This turned out to be a brilliant idea as we were joined by a couple of Kookaburras! They were so cute and came quite close. My first close up since I’ve been here. I love Kookaburras and get very excited when I see them. 🥰😀
We had a lovely afternoon and later that evening we wandered over the road and had a delicious Pizza! Altogether a fabulous day.
We were up earlyish again on Monday morning as we had to leave the hotel by 10am and we were booked for lunch at another gorgeous winery called, Leeuwin Estate.
We packed up and drove down to Prevelly and Surfers beach. I had visited this beach when I came down on my last trip to Margaret River.
It’s a stunning spot, the colours of the ocean are amazing. It’s in this area that they hold all the surfing competitions.
There were a few surfers out and we also spotted a lone black dog waiting patiently on the beach for his human to come back in. It was so cute to watch him get so excited when that happened! 😍❤️
We also got a flash of a surfers bum whilst he was getting changed! 👍
We arrived at the beautiful Leeuwin Estate and were greeted by another Kookaburra!
The Winery and its grounds are stunning. It’s one of the top wineries in the area and their set lunch was the reason Rebecca and I had come down.
I opted to do the wine pairing, which was $50/£25 which I thought was pretty good value. Rebecca wanted to try their signature, award winning Chardonnay, which was £22 a glass! The value of my wine pairing became apparent when the waitress explained that this Chardonnay was part of my wine pairing. 😍😀
The food was absolutely stunning, it looked and tasted amazing. The wines were delicious. The setting was beautiful, we even got a little bit of misty rain. The service was excellent.
A truly wonderful experience to share with Rebecca. It was fabulous.
I have been thinking about my next trip, having realised that Japan is not viable financially at the moment, I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go. I had a conversation with Tracey and she mentioned a couple of places that her and Jaques might be interested in visiting and that got me thinking. 🤔
The result of this thinking, and of looking through the brochure that had the Japan tour in, amongst others I have decided to go to India! 🇮🇳
I have always thought about India but I have been reluctant to go there as a solo female traveler, so the possibility of doing an organised tour solves that issue. I looked up lots of tours online and some of the tours in the brochure also looked great. I eventually found one online that was on offer and was 1/2 price! It looked fantastic. It was also through the travel agents here in Bunbury, Flight Centre. I made an appointment with the chap I’d spoken with before, Mathew and went over to book the tour. Mathew looked it up online and said, yes it was indeed 1/2 price but unfortunately I couldn’t go as the tour I’d found was for 18 – 35 year olds!! 😳 Bloody Gutted. How I missed that crucial piece of info (which was clearly stated on the details) I don’t know. Mathew then went through some other option’s and one of the tours in the brochure was on offer with 30% off. It covered pretty much the same itinerary so I went for it. It is a 15 day tour starting and finishing in Delhi. I also opted to pay the extra for my own room (it wasn’t too much) I have since spoken to a few people who have been to India and loved it, albeit with some horror stories (thanks Stretch! 😂) My current plan is to do the tour then stay in India for a few more weeks, possibly organise a Tiger Safari and then go down to Goa.
The tour is booked for February and before that I am going to go back to Sri Lanka. I was last there in 2018 and I loved it. This time I hope to visit some of the places I didn’t get to and do some things I didn’t do before. It will also be a different season, so I should be able to go into the ocean this time.
I’ve booked my flights, booked some accommodation, I have managed to book the same homestay that I had last time in Negombo, Sri Lanka with the wonderful Family who looked after me so well and Buddi who organised a fabulous tour for me. It will be so lovely to see them again. All I need to do now is organise visas for both countries, which is something I hate doing, Cory, you can confirm that! 😊 But I don’t have Cory on hand to help this time, so I’ll have to be a big girl and just get on with it.
So, that’s a plan in place, I feel a little better now I know what I’m doing.
The beginning of November is always a tricky time for me, and I was feeling a little low and very homesick, missing everyone. But I am feeling more positive and focused now.
If anyone has been to India before and has any tips or advice it would be gratefully received. The same for Sri Lanka.
A few little quirky things to note about Australia.
Rebecca & Chris’s home is just near a couple of schools, a Junior and a senior school. I drive past them every morning to take Rebecca to work. There is never a hold up due to large numbers of cars. Children are bused in or they walk, cycle. The other very striking thing to note is that the school fields, where the children do sports and play out, is not fenced. This is in stark contrast to British and American schools which are like secure compounds!
Twice a year the local council organise a rubbish collection. What happens is you are given a time 2-3rd week of November, this is when the council will come and collect anything that you don’t want or need. Like, beds, sofas, BBQs, doors, fridges, clothes, bits of wood literally anything! You simply place the items outside on the grass verge. People can come and peruse what you’ve put out and take it away if they want it, what’s left will be collected by the council! What a bloody great idea!!
To be fair it looks a little messy for a week or so, but so what.
Remember to let me know any ideas etc re India & Sri Lanka also any book recommendations.
Books read.
The Controller. Matt Brolly. OK.
The One Plus One. Jojo Moyes. I enjoyed it. I was funny and a good read.
Fear in the Fens. Joy Ellis. No 13 in the Detective Galena Series. An enjoyable series, and this one was a good read.
I’m getting a bit slack on my reading!
That’s it for now folks.
Have a great week.
Sending all my love to everyone especially Karen & Brenda. ❤️❤️
❤️🩷💛💙💚🤎🧡
Hereandthereclaire.com 