Mammoth Cave and the Margaret River

Apparently Australia is known for wines. I had no idea. Amy did though, and the closest winery of any repute was a good 3 hour drive away from Fremantle in a place called the Margaret River. Is it a river? Is it a town? Is it a duchy? Nobody knows.

The problem is that there's no easy way to get there. There is a tour bus, but it's a bus, and sometimes Amy gets sick on bus rides. Also, the round trip altogether is 12 hours, no food, and probably a bunch of drunk Aussies which could be really fun for 30 minutes and then really annoying for 11 hours and 30 minutes. Also it costs $200 each.

The alternative was for me to overcome my fear of roundabouts, driving on the left side and sitting in the right seat. Additionally 1/10 cars on the road have roo bars. I don't know if they're functional or decorative, but they sure don't do a good job of decorating.

So it all came down to which fear was worse. My fear of causing a massive 40 car pileup on the wrong side of a freeway or my fear of paying more money than I wanted to.

Of course, I ended up

DRIVING LIKE A BAWS

We drove for 3 hours down the coast, with a useless GPS and only missed our turnoff once. Luckily there was plenty of Billy Joel on the radio to keep us entertained (he's popular because he wrote their national anthem). And I had no reason to worry about not having kangaroo protection, because someone had been kind enough to run them all over and leave them on the shoulder before we got there. How thoughtful (seriously there were at least 5 carcasses on the road).

They have hard speed limits here, which I think is a good idea. I mean, in Canada nobody drives 100 so everyone's left guessing as to how fast you're really able to go before you get ticketed. Here if you go 4 clicks over they'll getcha. One of Amy's colleagues got pulled over for going 67 in a 60 km/hr zone.

 The main reason I ended up agreeing to this trip was because there are a series of caves near the Margaret River that sounded worth looking at. There are at least 4 or 5 different ones, but the one we ended up seeing is called Mammoth Cave. Be ready for lots of rock pictures.

The way in. There's a sign there that says watch out for snakes but the snake is coiled up like a poo so at first you're confused as to whether there are snakes or poo to beware of but then you realize a good policy is to just watch out for both.

Goddamn geological Tyrannosaurus.

Pictures from here on in are on long exposures, pardon the blur.

They gave us mp3 players for self guided tours but as soon as they started talking about bicarbonate depositing from water runoff coming from SNOOOOOOOOOORE.

The mnemonic I learned was that stalactites form on the Ceiling, and stalagmites form on the Ground. Much more helpful than the tour's stalactites are tight to the roof, and stalagmites might point up. Really? That's the best you could come up with?

This rock formation is called a shawl. It's like a flat stalactite, thin enough to be illuminated through.

It's hard to show how far away the ceiling is without video but it's really big. Probably big enough to fit a few of the condos I live in inside with room to spare.

Angled pokey rocks - I think they're angled because this particular piece fell from the roof.

 

There's a jawbone here. Can you see it?

Amy on the way out of the cave. Comes out in a kind of cenote type thing.

I think those are gum trees, which are very common here. It's also the name of their Kijiji.

After the cave we headed to the Leeuwin Estate, which is a winery famous for its concert series and its wine. Some notable musicians who have played there include Ray Charles, Jack Johnson, Sting and Tom Jones. Then there's the wine, which Amy tasted. I didn't take any pictures because boring.

Lastly on the way back we visited the longest jetty in the world in Busselton

I thought it sounded pretty lame but damn that is a long jetty. There's a train that runs on it to take you to the end and back but it took too long and I wanted a sandwich.

Just another sunny day in Western Australia.