G’day!
Welcome to Letters From the Road, and letter number 47. This one comes to you from Margaret River, a far flung part of a far flung country, that despite its remoteness is well worth a trip.
Letters From the Road is the story of the road trip around Australia that I took with my wife and two boys back in 2019.
The story comes to you in weekly installments, featuring the journal entries I wrote during the trip. The journal entries are word-for-word, and you’ll see them highlighted in the letter.
If you missed any letters and would like to catch up, you can find the other 46 letters here, being read with skepticism by Robert Frost.
Hooroo!
Luke
We shall be telling this with a sigh
When asked what the southern road brings
Two roads diverged in a wood, and we-
We took the one less traveled by
The one leading to Big Things.
Two roads diverge in a wood, which one do you take? You take the one with more Big Things, of course.
As we drove south out of Perth, we skipped the main road Highway 1, instead taking Highway 20, the Southwest Highway. It is certainly the road less traveled, but more importantly it took us through Harvey, home of the Big Orange Tower.
It’s a two-for-one, the Big Orange Tower, not just your ordinary Big Thing. It’s also a tower where you can climb some stairs to get a good view of the surrounding farmland*.
I’m not sure why one would want a view of the surrounding farmland, so you could choose the alternative we did: pull off to the side of the road, traipse through some orange groves, and snap some photos.
Though not a typical Big Thing, I liked the Big Orange Tower. It looks like something out of a sci-fi novel, the command centre for the evil Doctor Orange who keeps watch over the groves that are producing his orange henchmen, kind of like Sauron looking on from Mount Doom.
*I should say that we’ve visited the Big Pineapple in Queensland, and there too you can climb some stairs to the top of the pineapple and look out over the surrounding farmland.
Not far from Harvey is Brunswick - ‘the cream of the south west’ - where we'd heard that there is a ‘Big Cow’.
You can form your own opinion, but I’ll just say that Oscar was the only one who could be bothered to get out of the car to have a look at what’s called the ‘Cow on the Corner’. There was a park bench nearby that I found just as impressive.
The road eventually led us to our eventual destination, Margaret River.
You may have heard of Margaret River. Located in the far southwest corner of Australia, it’s a region - and a river, and a town - that is best known for its wine. The Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays are world class, and you have your pick of over 150 wineries. Wine is one of the biggest industries outside tourism, which is somewhat surprising considering the first vines weren’t planted until relatively recently, in 1967.
With many kilometres of gorgeous coast and some big waves, there has always been a surf culture in Margaret River. Turns out that the surf is considered world class as well. One of the main events of the World Surfing League is held annually at Margaret River.
Breweries, beekeepers and bakeries abound, the sorts of bougie things that spell good living. Throw in ancient forests of giant karri trees and a lighthouse, and you’ve got a vacationer's paradise.
Our home state of Victoria is similarly blessed with great food, wine, surf, giant trees - all the important things in life. But Margaret River packs all the same into an area that’s a third of the size of Victoria’s capital city Melbourne. And it has better weather.
With all this abundance, we decided that Margaret River would be a good spot to stay for a while. But while the abundance was enticing, it also had the effect of making me nervous.
We’d been on the road in Australia for just over two months, but this only represented a small portion of our travels. We left Melbourne in late-December 2018, so we were closing in on a year on the road.
Traveling for this long comes with many considerations, one of them being that at home point, the money will run out.
9 December 2019 - Big Valley Campsite
In this region of plenty, I believe we may exceed our budget. Katie mentioned a wine tour, Katie mentioned some sort of treetops zip line thing, Katie mentioned a mountain biking tour.
We’ve reached a point, actually we reached it a month ago, where I realised we actually had an excess of cash. This is largely due to Katie’s bonus, and our giant tax refunds, none of which were expected or budgeted for. So it makes our financial situation look OK on paper.
This has led to me taking the reins off, a little bit. Drinking more, a big meal out here and there (in Freo we had two!), and a consideration of Katie’s mentions. I’m still afraid that the money is going to disappear quickly in Melbourne between security deposits, furniture, school clothes and a computer for Henry, etc.
I’m being pulled in two different directions, being forced to listen to the two little voices on my shoulder, one whispering about being sensible and safe, the other telling me to experience this while I can and to stop worrying and to buy another interesting looking 4-pack at the bottle shop.
And neither is winning right now. Part of me wants to fuck off and do nothing while we are here, part of me wants to find a different brewery every day and spend the afternoon sitting in the sun with a pint.
These were the things on our minds as we drove toward the final Big Thing of the day, Big Valley.
If you were to look at the southwest corner of Australia from above, you’d notice that there’s a swath of treeless land of around 20 to 30 kilometres wide running up the coast, from Leeuwin at the bottom corner of the continent, all the way north to Perth.
This area is what’s called the Swan Coastal Plain, an area of sandy, rocky soil and wetlands. It’s home to the farms and wineries that make Margaret River famous. Drive east out of the town from which the area gets its name, however, and the manicured paddocks and vineyards quickly give way to forest.
The forests in this part of Australia are famous for their unique giant eucalpyt trees, which have wonderful names like tuart and jarrah, marri and karri, and the tingle. These species are some of the largest in Australia and the world, reaching heights of around 70 metres tall (230 feet). There’s something special about being in forests of tall trees.
Tucked in one of those forests east of the town of Margaret River is the Big Valley Campsite. Part farm, part caravan park, we’d picked it as a spot because good camping in the very touristy area was hard to come by, and because there were some things on offer - playing with guinea pigs, feeding goats, and the like - that we thought might keep the boys busy, if only for 15 minutes until they got bored. You never know with boys their age.
Our arrival coincided with a cool turn of the weather. As time passed and the days pushed further into summer, this was unexpected. We were fully expecting the weather to hold, continuing the heat which had followed us since the beginning of our trip in October. This was not to be.
According to the BOM* it is 15 degrees outside. That’s 59 F. Not warm. Not cold either, but not warm.
I don’t think the temperature has been this cold on our entire Australian trip. It’s surprising, it’s different, it’s refreshing. It brings a different feel to camping, more like when we were camping in the U.S.
One night in Yellowstone the temperature dropped to 0 F, and on that night I went to bed fully clothed and covered myself in the middle of the night with the doormat to keep warm.
Only now I’ve got a bed with a doona and I’m laying here in my underwear under the covers.
The BOM also says that it’s going to be 37C (98F) on Sunday, so we’ve got that going for us.
*The Bureau of Meteorology
The friendly lady at the campsite office told us to pick a spot up the back of the grounds, an area removed from some well manicured and established sites closer to the office and farmhouse. I wondered about this, as upon inspection, we’d been assigned to the section that’s a bit more free range, like camping in a paddock wherever you can find space.
We situated our trailer between a tent occupied by an old woman, and a caravan and tarp compound that was home to a guy with a mullet.
A short walk away was a tidy open air outdoor kitchen and showers. Looking around, there were three to four other tent sites near us that seemed to be occupied by long term residents.
I’d never wanted to live in a caravan park before, but situated as we were amongst the rest of the local yokels, it looked like we were going to get a chance whether we liked it or not.
More on the Big Valley vagabonds in your next letter, including some ocean fishing, lots of Victoria Bitter, and a skull show.