Swan Valley, Rottnest adventures!

When life throws change, you catch it and run with it! I was originally supposed to go to Melbourne this December, but things decided to take a different turn, so instead of meeting my parents there, they flew over to Perth for a weekend. The biggest challenge was that I was instructed specifically not to involve food and coffee. Well… considering I know nothing else, what was I going to show my parents as “fun things to do in WA”?

A lot of what they wanted to do was undoable without a car – such as a Margaret River tour. However, I was lucky enough to discover a tour bus in the Swan Valley which could cover Caversham Wildlife Park as well as a wine and beer tour! That sounded like fun! My parents also wanted to “catch the famous Perth ferry” which I assumed was Rottnest since that’s what you take the ferry for as a tourist.

It turned out to be a great time, even with some last minute itinerary changes and my limited knowledge of how to do an actual “Perth tour” of Perth.

First up, making food ahead of time! This was my attempt at non-perishable onigiri, which was stuffed with “vegan jerky strips” from an Asian grocer. These were really tasty (I tried a bit after making them), except that they don’t do well in the fridge. Due to a last minute swap between the days of Rottnest and Swan Valley, I didn’t time these as planned so I have no idea if they would have tasted good after 3 hours of being carried around; instead these were eaten as microwaved snacks in between adventures (which wasn’t as tasty as I thought they’d be).

I also made some sea salt and fennel biscuits but I’m too lazy to go fetch those pictures because I forgot to transfer them. Basically, I discovered a brand of sea salt and fennel graham crackers called “Knutsford” and they were soooo good, especially when paired with King Island’s Roaring Forties blue. I noted the ingredients in an attempt to replicate the flavour, and I think I did quite well, given I didn’t have a recipe and I randomly measured stuff based on my “randomly” made oat cookies. My one was a combination of plain flour, wholemeal spelt flour, psyllium husk, butter, egg, sugar, cinnamon, a tiny bit of crushed fennel, fennel seeds, and wakame sea salt.

With all this planned, I still didn’t manage to get the food right because originally, Rottnest was planned for Saturday, and Swan Valley for Sunday. The food was for Saturday. But since Rottnest got swapped to Sunday, I thought that we’d be able to buy food at Swan Valley so I didn’t prepare ahead. Thus, we were foodless on Saturday, which turned out to be rather inconvenient because I didn’t get to sneakily swing around to Willing Coffee. Instead it was just 2 minute noodles from the kiosk at Caversham, and a few tastings of wine! I was pretty dehydrated as well, it turns out caffeine withdrawal combined with dehydration is not the kind of headache you want while out and about!

I’d visited Caversham Wildlife Park before, so here are a new set of pics!

Is that the same rooster from before?!?!?!

It turns out I can’t read alternating bus timetables, so I did lose an hour waiting for the correct time and colour of bus to pick us back up…. Funnily enough, I ran into one of my dance instructors and fellow student on the bus twice! That was pretty cool!

My dad became pretty keen to visit some wineries, and since we were on a tour bus, why not! Given how crazy my parents went for black swans and black cockatoos, I decided that the Black Swan was a suitably named winery to stop by. Unfortunately, it was super busy as it seemed there was a function or party there with lots of people, so the person allocated for serving wine tastings was run off his poor feet.

We were allowed two free tastings here, so we went for the rose as it was described as “dry with a sweet twist”. It was actually pretty drinkable, and I liked the sweetness, even though I found it odd to have in a rose since the last one I really liked was done by Ducks in a Row in Adelaide, which was crisp, dry but also had some body to it.

My dad wanted to try the shiraz, whereas I chose a “bordeaux style” blend. Basically, I don’t like shiraz. Every time I’ve tried one, the tannins have ripped my face off, the pepperiness burns my tongue and the body punches my gut. Or something :D. This one wasn’t any different. The bordeaux style wasn’t any better, but it was smoothed out by some fruitiness to it.

We also took a look at the vineyards, but the grapes were still at a super small stage.

I chose this particular stop because there was also a couple of other things to do nearby – a teahouse/dessert place and some other things? I don’t remember. But then I spotted another cellar door by the name of Little River, and decided that was worth visiting.

What a quaint little quiet place! There were literally no other tourists here, so I lead my dad into the tasting room and decided to try a couple here too. This was way less “commercial” than the main winery. This was tiny and felt more cosy and I felt like we were paid attention to.

We tried a “Florial” rose here, and wow, completely different! This was dry and crisp, oh so crisp! I’ve not had a rose like this one before. I explained to the shop person that we’d tried Black Swan earlier but this was better. He explained that sweet roses are not a thing; that was something cool in the 70s but not a traditional rose. Traditional roses are meant to be crisp. Nice!

They had two shiraz wines on offer, their usual, and also an aged one (2009). I asked him which we should taste if I don’t like shiraz, and he suggested the aged one because it mellowed out the tannins. Woah, this was a shiraz??? It tasted like a proper full bodied wine (no idea why I think that this was “proper” lol)?! It had body, it had flavour, and it didn’t rip my face off! I was really impressed. Apparently, the shop person agreed that this is how shiraz should be drunk.

Well, this actually started to make a lot of sense for me. Shiraz wines tend to be the most expensive, and their value increases with age – and it’s no wonder; I guess they’re supposed to be aged so that the tannins have less of an impact. This is in contrast to how I like my nebbiolos/barolos/barbarescos, but I do have a 2007 barolo sitting around that I really need to try and see if I like aged nebbs.

Hooray for wine enlightenment!

We didn’t take anymore stops since it was getting late; I still wanted to get to King’s Park to show my parents the glass bridge that is at tree height. My mum mentioned wanting to see it, and I needed time in the park to find it, since I’ve only managed to stumble across it once because Pokemon Go took me there, of all things!

Alas, what I didn’t remember was that the bridge had opening hours, and we were too late! That meant I needed to revisit the next day. Since King’s Park always takes me into the city, I decided it would be good to show Elizabeth Quay at night. I think they liked it!

I had no idea that the water park lit up at night, how cool!

The next day we were prepared early for our trip to Rottnest Island, home of the ever-smiling quokkas. We were also going to attempt exploration via bicycle, even though my parents haven’t ridden bikes for decades, and the only practise I’ve had was in a carpark, just off training wheels. Well, this was going to be interesting!

It’s best to get the tickets prepaid, since it’s very popular in summer. I only booked the night before our trip, and the bike rentals by that ferry company had already sold out, so we had to try our luck on the island, which turned out to be a good thing because we were able to get the afternoon special (just under 50% off)! Hooray!

The boat ride to and from is horrendous though. The water was so choppy, it was way worse than any plane turbulence I’ve experienced in the last 10 years! We were basically constantly thrown from side to side. Not fun! Luckily I slipped in some anti sickness tablets for myself :D

My spiffy set of wheels! I definitely wobbled about a lot and stopped for some cars that passed by, but I also managed to safely pass a moving bus too! The biggest challenge was actually the wind and slopes – because I have no leg muscles, I had to walk my bike on shallow inclines :(. I managed to at least ride through a very windy section, but my parents had to walk their bike through that.

Nevertheless, the bike was so much fun! I never got to realise my dream of a hipster pushbike in Adelaide because I was too terrified of sharing the road with cars (plus the cost of a bike itself,maintenance and finding parking), but being here in a very bike-friendly zone made it super enjoyable!