A wet day in Margaret River


The rain continued today, in five minute bursts.

In the morning we went to the Moss Wood Vineyard for a tour. The Vineyard is a working operation so not really suitable for kids, and as they weren’t drinking the fathers took the children back to our cars while the ladies got stuck in to the wine. My hope was that the children would play in the sun, but of course it started raining, so we all got into our friends’ SUV. This was a huge seven seater, but with children all over the middle row of seats, I had to climb in through the tailgate. This was fine, until the rain stopped and everyone got out and forgot about me, and there was no way to reopen the tailgate from the inside.

Luckily the other doors were unlocked, and so after five minutes of trying to squeeze myself over the seats (protip when stuck in the back of a Nissan Qashqai – face backwards and down, then put your legs over the seats first and then push yourself over, don’t try going face first!) I got out. And it started raining so everyone got back in the SUV again. Sigh.

After the factory tour, the wives reappeared a bit sozzled and we drove down the road to the Cheeky Monkey brewery, along with a hen do and a bachelor party, and the children played in a slightly damp sandpit while I tried not to stare at heavily tattooed side-boob and eat my chips in peace. There’s a lot of outside seating and our children delighted in finding and then touching the seats that birds had shat on, necessitating lots of visits to wash hands.

One of our number still naps, but my beasts don’t, so we drove to Margaret River to buy groceries for tonight, and as is traditional I went to a skate shop to buy discounted Vans trainers, and then hung out in Margaret River’s bookshop while I waited for it to stop raining. (Every five minutes.) We bought another bottle of gin (infused with hemp, of all things) and then drove to Sunflower Farm.

Sunflower Farm is a petting farm with only a few horses, so I didn’t have much of an allergy risk. There were baby goats and baby cows and baby sheep, some stinky pigs, some guinea pigs, a bunch of fowl and some more pigs, and we all got a bucket of carrots and cabbage to feed them with. I like feeding pigs, it gives me an immense feeling of satisfaction. The girls were enraptured because they were able to bottle feed the kids and lambs and calves. They also got to feed the horse, some alpacas or llamas (I always forget which is which), play with the guinea pigs and stuff cabbage through a fence to feed ducks.

All in all, a very good day. We drove home, fed all the kids, and then played a game of Settlers of Catan where I didn’t want to kill all the other players, before putting the kids down and I started on the dangerously strong beer (10%) that I’d bought from the Cheeky Monkey brewery because I liked the packaging. Whoops.


2 responses to “A wet day in Margaret River”

  1. Alpacas have spear shaped ears and llamas have banana shaped ears. Also the Tintin book where the llama takes against Captain Haddock is true to life, apparently llamas are grumpier. Although preferably I’d use the first as a means of IDing.
    I don’t think we have 10% been in the UK, which is a shame. And discount Vans sound good too. Australia has all the best shopping.

    • The Colonial Brewery Co that we went to today had 12% beer called “Inquest” – which is what I assume would happen if I drank a few

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