We had a big day planned for our full day down south. We started our second day of the long weekend with breakfast at White Elephant Beach Cafe. It’s quite literally a cafe with the beach. The food was simple and hearty. It’s a popular spot as people can enjoy the beautiful views of the beach while munching away at breakfast or enjoying a cuppa.
After breakfast we walked along the beach for a short period before making our way to our first stop, Yahava KoffeeWorks. Yahava is a cool little place where you get to buy coffeebeans from their roastery, do some free coffee tasting and buy all sorts of coffee related merchadise. You can easily spend 30 minutes browsing and tasting coffee. Next to Yahava is Temper Temper Chocolate. You can find all sorts of cholocate here. From white to milk to dark. Different percentages of dark chocolate. All sorts of flavours – mint, chilli, nuts. Definitely worth checking out if you’re a chocolate fan.
Margaret River and more broadly the South West region of WA is known for it’s wineries. There are easily hundreds of wineries in the area. We decided to check out Voyager Estate and Leeuwin Estate that afternoon. Voyager Estate is worth a visit even if you’re not a wine drinker. They have a beautiful flower and produce garden, a great rose garden and a great little restaurant if you’re after a fancy meal (more on that in a future blog post). Leeuwin Estate is a little bit more rustic and they have a cool little free art gallery down in the basement if you are they way inclined.
After the wineries, we kept driving south towards the infamous Boranup Karri Forest. You might not want to make the drive through the forest if you are a bit precious with your car as the road is basically an unseal dirt road! I had a tricky time trying to compose an interesting shot of the very tall karri trees. They didn’t turn out too bad.
Hamelin Bay was our next stop on our drive down. The beach is famous for it’s sting rays which can be seen at the shoreline. Like almost all the beaches in WA, you can see white sand and turquoise waters for miles. There’s also a coastal cliff walk that you can do as well. It would have been great to hang around until closer to sunset and/or take some long exposure photos. However, we had places to be!
We wanted to make the drive all the way down to Augusta to check out Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse. It’s the tallest lighthouse on mainland Australia and it’s somewhere to check out if you haven’t been. Make sure you dress warmly though as the winds can be pretty strong and cold up the top. You get to see where the Southern and Indian Oceans meet – the most south westerly point of Australia!
As we had a dinner booking back in Margaret River town, we couldn’t stay for sunset down in Augusta. Instead we made the straight drive back to Margaret River. Prevelly Beach, near Margaret River, is famous internationally for its great surfing conditions. It’s also famous for being a fantastic lookout spot for sunset. They’ve decked out Surfers Point so people have somewhere to sit and enjoy the view as the sun disappears off the horizon.
The final stop for the day was dinner at the popular Japanese restaurant, Miki’s Open Kitchen. If you’re after some smart casual fine-dining, this is a great place for it. It’s pretty small, cosy and popular so it’s best to book in advance if you’re interested in dining here, You can order a set course of 5 to 6 dishes. Or you can pick off the menu. I’ve been here on 2 different occasions and have enjoyed my experience both times. This is just a snippet of the dishes we ordered that night. I also think it’s really neat to be able to watch the chefs cook all your dishes in an open kitchen!
This ends one of my longer blog posts that I’ve written in a while! It was great reviewing and reliving those memories from a little while ago. That’s exactly the reason why I enjoy photography. Photography allows me to capture my travel memories and almost forgotten moments. Thanks for stopping by today.
J.
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