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We've been in Margaret River itself for the past 4 days, and it's our favourite place in Australia that we have visited so far. On our first day we just wandered around the town, where there was a market full of stalls from local shops to look around. The rest of the town is also really nice, with lots of shops and cafes, it's quite busy for somewhere so small which is a nice change from some of the other small towns we have been to. On our first full day we went on a winery and brewery tour around the area with a company called Bushtucker Tours - we were taken to 3 wineries, a brewery, a distillery, a cheese factory and a chocolate factory, with free tastings at all of them (apart from the brewery) and lunch included - we got to taste kangaroo and crocodile meat, which are both really good! The day was really good fun, we played games on the bus and were told some local history, and all the food and drink tasted great! The weather wasn't great to say it was the first official day of Australian summer - it actually rained a lot in the morning, so it felt more like Guernsey weather, but the rest of the day was great fun - especially the distillery, the owner was hilarious with a real aussie sense of humour (quite insulting!). The next day the weather was much better, mid 20s and really sunny for a change, so we first of all headed to the town of Cowaramup just north of Margaret River to see all the cows they have around the town, including the golden cow - lots of them were dressed up for Christmas! Then we headed out to the beach at Gnarabup - we booked some surfing lessons for the next day with the Margaret River Surf School, then had lunch at a really nice beach cafe. The weather was gorgeous, so we spent the rest of the afternoon on Gnarabup beach, Joel went for a swim and said it wasn't even that cold! For our last day we wandered around the town again and had some lunch at another nice cafe, before heading out to Redgate Beach just south of MR for our surf lesson. We had a private lesson with the head coach, but had been given a bit of discount on it which is always good! The beach was really nice and quiet with only a few other beginner surfers around, and lots of quite big waves. We spent a few minutes on the beach practicing, then headed straight out into the water for our 2 hour lesson. It was pretty hard going at first, with some quite strong currents, but eventually we both managed to stand up! I was really happy about this because I have a pretty appalling sense of balance, but I managed to surf all the way in to the beach! We had a little rest on the beach, then headed straight back out - we both managed to stand up on the board around 5 times (both very wobbly but we did it!), before we started running out of time and getting quite tired. Our coach was pretty impressed as he said lots of people don't manage to stand up in their first lesson, so we were really pleased with ourselves! We'll definitely try to book some more surfing lessons while we are over here. All in all this part of WA has been our favourite place so far, we'd definitely recommend people coming to Margaret River if they ever get the chance to come to WA!
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