The Silver Lining of Margaret River

My approach to planning this trip so far has been 'just in time': do some initial investigation, keep alternatives open and make concrete bookings as late as possible. It makes the travel as flexible as it can be (unless you want to fork out for the kinds of fares which bundle the cancellation fees). On Friday night I was still thinking: should I take a train across Australia? Or hire a van and drive myself across the Nullarbour Desert? Early Saturday morning, I made the decision for the train, which was leaving the next day. But it was already full ... so I booked the next one, hired a car and headed into the winelands around Margaret River, south of Perth and close to where the Indian Ocean and the 'Southern Ocean' come together on Australia's extreme South Western edge.

What seemed like a minus of this this style of non-planning has become a plus: the area is lush with green spring and I've spent the day doing wine sampling with Frederic and Sophie, a couple of french people (not a french couple) I met in Perth. And since Frederic works on the wine ordering side of a top French restaurant and has spent years studying wine, it became an expert tour. We bought a whole lot of local cheese and ate it on bread (butter? Non! you cannot eat cheese and butter together!). On the verge of Australia, and I felt like I was in France.

And then there's the music. The rental car's stereo let me discover one of my favourite things in Australia so far: the music station TripleJ, which plays a non-stop stream of unknown tunes almost all of which I immediately love. Listening gives me a total buzz much stronger than the Australian wine.