Food and Drink

Today turned into a bit of a foodie tour, and I can’t say I mind that at all. With the prediction of a showery morning arriving with a front we were pretty motivated to get packed before the rain came. I wouldn’t say we managed to get out dry, but we did manage to move to the campers kitchen early enough to scare our lovely hostess, Barb, into thinking we may have left without taking our scones. Hardly! Fresh, hot and jam and cream, two each and best of all, no effort on our part. With the going rate for a scone in a devonshire tea in these parts being $4, that plate was worth more than we paid for the night in the caravan park. Awesome!

Even with all of that we managed to get away before opening time, so at the advice of our hostess, we went up to the Harvey Dam for a look around. As much a water storage facility as a public park and arts centre, it was worth a look. Lovely gardens surrounded an amphitheatre suitable for outdoor performances. The view across the valley was into some classic hillside sheep and dairy country, so with a little rain around, it was pretty as a picture.

Back into town we looked up the Harvey Fresh Dairy, knowing that visitors were not really catered for at the facility. What we didn’t know was that it is as much about juice as milk, with dairy and orange juice processing facilities next to each other. The juice processing is amidst vast orange orchards. The amount of fruit on the ground made you want to get out and collect some, but we resisted. The first purchase for the day was some strawberry milk, a cheese selection and grapefruit juice from the retail outlet associated with a cellar door wine sales. I resisted the call of the muscat, but we could have also had some orange wines as well as some more traditional varieties.

In the way out of town we stopped to check the welcome mosaic. In this area, an artist who’s name escapes me for the moment has been commissioned to produce all sorts of stunning mosaic murals. We have seen quite a number in our travels today. This one featured a dairy cow and orchard theme. You’d swear it was a painting while driving, but close inspection reveals the thousands of tiny tiles.

The next stop was a small backtrack, to the local “i”. This one makes its theme out of May Gibbs, the creator of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, the gumnut babies, and the evil banksia men. As an immigrant to this country about 130 years ago as a four year old, she spent a couple of formative years in the area while her family made one of several attempts to earn a living in this land. While she moved on, publishing in Sydney, this area claims to have provided the inspiration. There was also some lovely traditional cottage gardens and small orchard and vineyard surrounding a boutique cafe in the grounds, and a display on the history of irrigation and water management in the area. It was indeed the expansion of the dam, from 9 to more than 50 gigalitres which led to the chaos on the roads around the dam we experienced yesterday.

Not far down the road was a rather more dangerous shop. Harvey Cheese is a specialty cheese maker with a gallery-style shopfront and cheese tasting. We had a little lecture in the car before entering that it was a tasting, not a buffet smorgasbord, but I might as well have saved my breath. They didn’t give too much away but we left a sizeable amount of cash there for a reasonable pile of cheese so our diet will be somewhat rich for a few days I suspect.

We hit the coast just north of Bunbury at a place called Australind. That was a name I knew as a brand of forest products (plywood perhaps?), but it was a surprise to me that it was a town. There was a wood gallery but again the unfriendly attitude to photography gave us little reason to delay, so even though it was quite pretty and inspired in places, it will soon be forgotten.

On to Bunbury proper. Again, a lot of industrial development around the port. We climbed a lookout tower on the hill overlooking the town and a large estuary. Like a lot of places down the coast, there are huge lumps of money being spent in new housing developments, with some expensive housing as well. There is clearly some economic confidence around here. After lunch we headed inland again.

Seriously in …up territory, we went through Dardanup into Boyanup. We nearly blinked and missed it, but Lynne spied another furniture gallery. This time rather more friendly. Only open on weekends, so that was lucky. One of the artists there, one of the three responsible for filling the gallery, was more than happy for us to take photos. He considered it quite a compliment, sharing with us a story of one of the junk Indonesian teak importers in town that wouldn’t allow photography. Fortunately freight is prohibitive from this distance, otherwise that shop could have been dangerous.

On the way back to the coast we went via Donnybrook into a cidery. Haven’t been to one of them before, and we don’t mind the odd cider. Left a good deal more money there with the lovely guys behind the counter. Great location with stonefruit as well as apples and pears orchards. I don’t have great expectations for the two bottles of apple wine I bought there at $5 a throw, even if they are 11 years old and prizewinners in 2000. The ciders were there for the tasting though, and Lynne was quite happy to oblige.

We passed through more orchard country, and the small range of roadside sales gave good quality apples. After our success with Sundowners yesterday, we stocked up on Royal Gala, Fuji and Granny Smith today.

Back out to the coast again, having made about 60km progress for the day, we went chasing a tuart forest. These are old and slow-growing eucalypts unique to this area, and there is now only one small patch of old growth tuart left, now protected in the Tuart National Park in the coastal strip just north of Busselton. The tuarts here are up to 500 years old, 35m high and 11m around in their largest. For memory the tuart wood was highly prized for some colonial construction purposes further north in the state, but I can’t remember what that was. No doubt its usefulness was known long before the limitation of the resource, with its slow regrowth time, was realised, leading to the over-exploitation.

So into Busselton proper for the night. An expensive caravan park made a little more churlish by the requirement to feed the stove 20c to make it work, while the jug, microwave and toaster are all free.

Margaret River beckons tomorrow, so I expect our current oversupply of food and drink will only get worse in the short term. We have more food on board now than when we hit the Kimberley!