Day 6 – Margaret River to Fremantle – 20 September 2017

We set off early from Margaret River as there wasn’t much to hang around for (no WiFi!) and made our way up the coast on the Caves Road, instead of the bigger and busier 10. We made a quick stop at Canal Rocks which were nice but not nearly as impressive as Elephant Rocks a couple of days earlier. From there it was a quick drive to Yallingup for another few pictures (you can spot a theme here – drive, stop, jump out, quick few pictures, jump back in, drive, repeat).

Dunsborough was next on the map and turned out to be a fairly large and nice looking town. From here on the coast became much more densely populated and kind of commercialised. I find it hard to explain but it is very similar to parts of the coast in America where we drove for ages with town upon town of new housing developments and densely populated beach towns, with not that much to distinguish any of them. So far on the trip, once we headed out of Perth it was very sparsely populated with small towns and lots of open land, but clearly things were changing and this part of the coast must be very popular, whether with holiday makers of permanent residents I’m not sure – probably a combination of both?

Next we made a quick stop at Busselton Jetty, which is 1.84km long but didn’t go on it, even though there is a little train you can take and an underwater observatory. You pretty much have to pay to do ANYTHING here and while I don’t mind it so much, I feel that if you pay $30+ for any specific activity you should probably spend time enjoying it and we are generally not that keen on spending hours doing one activity when there is so much we plan to see and do on any given day.

At Bunbury the Dolphin Discovery Centre was closed for refurbishment, but they did have a few aquariums with some fish – my favourite being the Cowfish! At Lake Clifton we stopped for a walk and to have a look at the thrombolites, which are actually really interesting and quite amazing.

One of the highlights (for me anyway!) in Australia is the amazing pies, and I had to have a pie at Miami Bakehouse in Falcon. I’m glad to say I wasn’t disappointed and the Lamb Rogan Josh pie was great, even though I had trouble deciding what to pick with all the interesting flavours on offer.

When we got to Fremantle, we checked into the very good Quest Fremantle, parked the car and set off to explore. Fremantle is a very nice looking town and definitely somewhere I can see myself living – it has a great combination of pretty buildings, bars, beaches and restaurants with plenty to do and within easy reach of Perth.

As we went out fairly late we didn’t bother going back to the hotel, but decided to rather have a drink and something to eat and have an early night. The Little Creatures Brewery is in Fremantle, and I had to go and check it out (they do a beer called Elsie!). The brewery is well worth visiting, with lots of craft beers on tap, as well as lots of food options and outside seating – just a shame it started raining as soon as we ventured outside!

Once the rain calmed down a bit we went on a bit of a pub crawl and had dinner (Chicken Parmi special & beer – $15!) at Sail and Anchor Pub & Brewery before going to Bar Orient. Unfortunately they had Karaoke on and nothing will ever compare to Karaoke nights at our local in St Albans, so we went to The Newport for another drink, soon followed by our bed as we were knackered by then!