Margaret River

I took a day trip down to Maragaret River yesterday. It was on a bus tour organised by the school with students from a few different universities on the bus.

First stop was the Maragret River Chocolate Company. It wasn't too exciting, but I did get some free chocolate samples and bought some peanut brittle.



Then off to the beach at Prevally Park. It's apparently a 'world famous surfing beach', so spent a bit of time watching ppl surf and looking out at the ocean. Definitely wouldn't want to learn to surf there! Those waves were huge!



After the beach was the Rivendall Vineyard. Some people did a bit of wine tasting, but SC and I took a nice walk through the garden. Guess what, they had fruit trees! There was a lemon tree, lime tree, 'Sa teen yow' (ie.. Pomello, or the chinese big grapefruit), and tangerine tree. Here's a pic of an orange growing on a lime tree.



Lemons!


Last, but not least, was the Ngilgi Caves. This was my favourite stop. It was really pretty in the cave. They had little lights set up through the cave, so we didn't need our own. Apparently they have the fastest growing stalactites in the world.. a whole 1mm/year, or 1cm/decade =) Also learned a few interesting facts, stalactites are the spikes from the roof down, while stalagmites are the ones growing from the floor up from water dripping down. They're made from calcium carbonate deposits and have a lot of strength for compression/stretch forces, but not shear forces so they break quite easily if you push/lean against it's side.



To make use of our time on the bus, SC and I even did some pathology review on the bus. So all in all, it was a very nice day. Thankfully it didn't rain till we were nearly home. Water started leaking on me in the bus!