"Study" Break, pt. 2

After our night in Walpole, we headed toward the bigger and better-known town of Margaret River. The town's stories are of wine and surfing. It's surrounded by vineyards, so the sophisticate can spend his days touring from winery to winery, taking a bus so he may sample at every stop. Just outside town is Surfer's Point. Every year, a major surfing competition is held there.

I'd love to be in town for that, if just to watch the surfer dudes interacting with the wine lovers:
SOMMELIER: This is a sophisticated red with fruity overtones and an earthy finish.
SURFER: Does that mean it'll get me drunk?

Alas, neither wine nor wipe-outs were on our schedule. I tried to arrange a surf lesson, but apparently most teachers migrate to warmer waters up north during the winter. None of us was a wine connoisseur, so the tours didn't hold much appeal. So, rather than having what one might call a normal Margaret River experience, we spent time at the backpackers, shooting pool and hanging out with some of the other guests.

For dinner, we went to a little spot called Settler's Tavern. The food was amazing. Everything was an American-sized portion. And I don't mean over sized to the point of absurdity. I mean that these dishes were the size of our continent.

The best looking dish was reef and beef. (Perhaps they think that serving surf and turn in a surf town is too cheesy to be a good idea.) There was a steak, prawn, fish, and maybe even some calamari. A little salad was thrown on the plate, looking like an out-of-place afterthought, too. I would go to Margaret River again just so I could order a reef and beef. Especially since I ended up getting a hamburger instead of that monstrosity. Few of the decisions I've made in Australia haunt me, but that burger is one of them.

Settler's is also the first Australian tavern I've been to that has a jukebox. I'm a sucker for jukeboxes. They're like black holes that suck up my spare change and play music. I was very excited to find one. That its selection of classic rock was limited was a disappointment easily overcome by the simple fact that it was there. So, that was Margaret River for me. Not wine or surfing, but a jukebox.

To me, the real story of Margaret River was how we got there. Our trip from Walpole to this fabled little town was considerably more memorable and exciting than Margaret River proved to be.

It began after we woke up in Walpole. The proprietor of the backpackers there suggested that, instead of taking the main road, we take a side road to Margaret River that would take us past a waterfall. Turns out, this side road was a little dirt road that went through the middle of the forest. Quite quickly after turning onto the road, one got the feeling that it was rarely traveled. This feeling was cemented when two and a half hours driving on the road saw only a single other vehicle.

The waterfall we stopped at was unimpressive. The water was dirty, the falls weren't of a particularly imposing height, and someone had decided to name the river the Deep River, which it clearly wasn't. Despite this, it had the endearing quality of being well off the beaten path. Thinking that you may be some of the only people in a week or month to see a waterfall can make even the sickliest little trickle into something special.

Other attractions, however, don't need to be isolated to be worth visiting. Case in point: Diamond Lookout Tree. It's on a main road. It's labeled clearly. It's in guidebooks. And it is amazing.

In the States, we know that wildfires are a problem. So, we build a big tower, have someone sit in it and look for smoke. In Australia, bushfires are a problem. So, they found a big tree, built a cabin on top of it and had someone sit in it and watch for smoke. This is how Diamond Lookout Tree came to be more interesting than your average 50 meter tall Karri tree.

Of course, a glorified tree house isn't all that exciting unless you can play in it. And you can. There is a little warning sign at the base of the tree that warns visitors that falling might be adverse to their health. No one is there to supervise. No one is there to try and dissuade those who look reluctant or encourage those who look eager. There is just the warning sign, and another warning half way up the tree, letting climbers know that what they just did was "the easy bit."

It's a nerve-wracking climb. The spikes are far enough apart that there is no question that a misstep would quickly lead to a predictably ugly end. It had rained earlier, so the spikes were wet and cold. The wind was up, which the sign said was a bad thing. Once you're up top in the 8' by 8' observation deck, you can feel the entire tree sway back and forth with the breeze. And you still have to climb back down.

Back home, they'd never let you up a tree like that. Especially since the way up is only guarded by a little chicken wire that I suspect is there to give the impression that preventing falls was a priority when the ladder was constructed rather than provide any real protection. Even if you could go up, the stack of waivers and insurance forms required would, by its very length, defend itself against the risk of being filled out. (Thank you, Winston Churchill, for putting it better than I ever could.)

The experiences on the empty road, at the secluded waterfall, and up the tree were what made getting to Margaret River so much better than being in Margaret River.

After our night in Margaret River, we swung by a beach in Yallingup, passed through Bumbury, and found our way back to Perth. I love the names of the places I've been. Walpole. Yallingup. Bumbury. They sound, for lack of a better way to put it, funny. Syllables that shouldn't go together have been conjoined and used as labels for places. This naming scheme adds another layer of charm to a place one could explore for a lifetime without ever becoming jaded or bored (especially when talking about the towns he's visited). I only got three days there, but I'll be talking about it for the rest of my life.