Perth, Australia 2014 – Margaret River

Next day after Penguin Island, we made another road trip to Margaret River, a tourist spot about 2 1/2 hours away.

One of the main attractions of Margaret River is the wineries. However, we didn’t manage to enter any wineries but instead we visited a chocolate factory, a cheese tasting house, nougat factory, olive farm and a coffee roastery.

Since the journey was so long, we made a few stops by the roadside to attend to a screaming #LiviaFoong. Like many babies, she hates the car seat. Most of the time we would leave her to cry but sometimes mummy couldn’t stand it.

Here’s a picture of a signboard I saw while walking #LiviaFoong at a random stop.

First stop! The Margaret River Chocolate Factory. You can get free chocolate pastilles here. There was a queue of people to get to the free chocolates. The chocolates are divided into milk, dark and white chocolates.

Western swamp tortoise shaped chocolates.

Salty caramel peanut cake and iced chocolate. The cake was really salty. Iced chocolate was so-so. Koko Black’s iced chocolate beats it hands down.

There was a small window to watch the chocolate making process. It wasn’t engaging at all.

“So much chocolate so little time” is a very apt slogan. I don’t know what chocolate to buy hence I bought the pastilles which was given free.

There was also a garden behind the cafe. Livia hung out here for a bit until the flies kept disturbing her.

Saw this lizard outside the chocolate factory. It looked like the flatten lizard we saw at Canal Rocks. It was biting the grass and wasn’t afraid of us.

Next stop, Bettenay Wines. We actually came here for the nougats. It wasn’t very sweet and quite addictive. This small little building is situated next to a lake and has a hotel above it.

Got #LiviaFoong a ladybug here. Didn’t get any nougat or wine though.

All sorts of flavours.

There was also a small window to watch the nougat making process. It was also like watching paint dry.

Cheese tasting was next. I thought it was a factory but it was just a small house.

It was however packed with people. The cheese tasted okay but the dips were nice.

William and Livia

Olive farm, Olio Bello was next. I’m not a big fan of olive hence I dreaded going there for a bit. I was hoping we could quickly rush to the coffee roaster to have coffee.

But I enjoyed the free dips at the place. The place smelled good too as there’s a restaurant there.

This is how the shop looked like. I was surprised that there were no hoards of Chinese tourists.

Olive trees. None of us was interested to go see the trees up-close.

The Mediterranean Relish was excellent. I bought a bottle of this sourish dip.

Olio Bello has an awesome baby diaper changing room. It comes with free baby wipes, disposable changing pad and nappy bags.

I was looking forward to visit Yahava Coffee throughout the trip. But we left it last on the itinerary. By the time we were done with the olive farm, we had only 15 minutes before Yahava closes its cafe. We rushed there but got lost halfway. We ended up in a housing area.

Fortunately, we found it when we were about to exit the housing area. Melvin and I ran to the place once we got off from the car.

I was telling Melvin that I’ve accepted our fate that we won’t make it. It was scheduled to close at 5pm and we were there about 450pm.

Fortunately, the cafe was still open! The coffee tasting section was closed though. To celebrate, I bought 1kg of coffee beans and drank 2 cups of piccolo latte.

Loads of beans to choose from. A staff was there to recommend their beans which suit our taste.

Romeo 5 was highly recommended by them. It’s their standard house blend.

My piccolo latte was made from this Kahava beans. I’ve never tasted coffee beans from India. But the piccolo latte was good!

Black Gold – Another recommendation by them. I’ve also never tasted PNG beans.

Generic name. It was labelled as strong by the staff.

The roastery. This machine is what you use to roast coffee beans. I wonder how many KGs can this machine roast per round.

The shop has many coffee making accessories and related products.

French presses, knock box (that’s to knock off the espresso “cake” off the handle) and pitcher (generally used to warm milk or make froth).

All sorts of mugs and flasks.

Interesting mug. There was a test unit and I can attest it doesn’t topple easily. It uses a suction to attach itself to the surface.

Background info about Yahava. I don’t think we have a roastery that is open to the public and have free tasting sessions daily. Everything is just hipster cafes in Malaysia.

It get a bit annoyed when someone who only drinks lattes complaining that this and that coffee sucks. That’s not how you rate coffee.

There’s a coffee plant outside the roastery. No, the plant doesn’t smell like coffee.

Xanadu Winery was next. I didn’t care much about winery after I had my coffee. Heh

Most of the wineries were open for free wine tasting. However, we were pretty late and most of them were closed.

#LiviaFoong clearly enjoyed herself at Perth. She was very eager to get off the car whenever we made a stop. She was in big smiles whenever the wind gets to her face.

Surfers Point was next. It’s where the actual Margaret River meets the sea.

We had an unobstructed view of the sea. I didn’t see any surfers though.

It was very cold and chilly due to the wind. I didn’t bring a jacket and #LiviaFoong and wife only had a cardigan.

#LiviaFoong braving the cold. She was staring at the sunset.

We had dinner at Margaret River town. It’s just a small street but seems pretty self sufficient. It has a tourist centre, bookstore, pharmacy, toy store and many restaurants including a Thai restaurant that serves AUD20 noodles.

AUD 23 Pizza at Goodfella’s. It was pretty good and the crust, which I usually don’t eat, was soft and doughy. I liked it.

I remember it being AUD23 because the cashier had to return us AUD23 for charging us an extra pizza which we didn’t order.

We also had wine. This particular wine attracted us because it claims to have coffee beans. There was no coffee beans inside nor it had any tinge of coffee in its taste.

We went home straight after dinner. It was long journey home. Livia was sound asleep most of the time. Glad we made a trip to Margaret River.