Living in Perth could be a strategic base if you want to explore Western Australia more. Many of backpackers in Perth do the road trip either to down south (Perth – Margies – Esperance) or up north (Perth – Pinnacles – Monkey Mia – Kalbarri – Broome – Karijini) . If its’ down south, one of the most popular destination is Margaret River or people here most likely to call it Margies. Best way to get there is by driving a car. And thanks to Facebook Group – Perth Backpacker, which facilitate all the backpackers to swap any kind of information including sharing trip together.
Honestly, I was a bit scared when I decided to contact one of the member who just posted that he was looking for travel mates to go down south to Margies for a weekend getaway. I even did a social media background check on him, just to prevent something that we all never expect, you know.
The host, Michael, said that there would be 1 other guy and 6 girls join the trip. Apparently, the other guy is his friend, means all the new member are girls. Hmm, smell a bit fishy. Anyway, we arranged to leave on Saturday morning, then stay for a night at the camping ground in Yallingup, and do some excursions like caving, wine tasting or visiting chocolate factory.
Going for a camp in caravan park was actually one of my bucket list in Australia. As you know, that Australia is a friendly land of road-trippers, bunch of caravan park available across this country where you can park your caravan and build a tent to stay overnight, or even rent a cabin with very good facilities. I was pretty much excited about it.
At 7 in the morning, Michael and Ramona appeared at our door. Our house became the base for meeting point with the others because of its center location. Just a minute after, the other car came up with Shane, Karina and Petra inside. Then all of us left the house as soon as possible to pick up another girl, Jessica who lives in Pinjarra. It was funny actually when we revealed our fear to Michael on the way, said that we were so doubt because that was our first time going for a trip with random people from facebook group! Turns out the trip was hella fun and we could get a long together even after!
We managed to hit the famous Busselton Jetty at Busselton. it has like 2 km long jetty, the longest one in southern hemisphere. It was such a lovely weather when we got there, sunny and breezy at the same time. Thanks Michael to bring us here!
It needs around 3 hours to reach Yallingup from Perth. Not bad at all! We arrived at the caravan park just before midday and straightly having a barbie (BBQ) for lunch.
We were not allowed to build a tent because it wasn’t check in time yet, so we decided to leave and went to our 1st excursion, Lake Cave! which approximately 45 mins away from our camp site. Actually there are many caves around Margies, but I could say Lake Cave has the most unique point because of it’s lake inside the cave. We need to pay $20 for the entrance fee, there will be a guide who explain everything you need to know about the cave, how is the process of stalactites and stalagmites, how old is it, etc. It was pretty interesting, but I had seen similar thing before in Indonesia so, well yeah…not that special again for me, unless we really did the caving, maybe. But unfortunately, this cave is not made for adventure caving (exploring the cave system like I did in Buniayu Cave, Indonesia before), it is just to look around and recreation.
We aimed to have a wine tasting in the afternoon, but unfortunately the place was closed due to private event. Sad!
Have I mentioned that our caravan park was located just next to the beach? Oh yes, as we failed to do the wine tasting, we went back to the caravan park to build our tent for tonight and….correct! having a beach sesh!
I also really enjoyed the time when all of us sitting together in front of our tents, chatting and staring at the million stars while having our simple (another) BBQ dinner. The only disturbing thing was the temperature. It was freaking freezing!! None of us could stand late because of that. So, if you ever have an idea to camp on spring season in Australia, please consider to bring a bed cover with you. It surely would help a lot!
On the next day, we didn’t do much things other than visiting a chocolate factory. I’d prefer to call it chocolate shop though. It wasn’t really a factory, had a breezy brunch there because it was raining all of the sudden.
Then decided to head back to Perth after.
This was my very-very first go on a trip with such a random people from various countries. Not as scary as I thought before, because we were all from the same page, know no one and aim for one, travel.
I certainly would love to have more 🙂
