A boat, a beer and a cave combine to make an excellent day's touring in Western Australia's stunning Cape Naturaliste and Margaret River region, as Jane Avery explains.
"I feel like I'm 16 again, it's amazing. Besides, this is God's Country."
It's 7am. Yallingup Beach, in the south of Western Australia.
And this is my lasting memory from a conversation with George, whom I'd seen from a distance as I stood on the gold and blue shoreline in the early-morning sun. He was one of those early-bird surfers riding angelically white breakers rolling in from the Indian Ocean.
I encountered George as I walked back to my hotel across the beachside car park. Sixtyish, wetsuit dripping, with his well-loved red and blue long board towering above his head.
His face creased, tanned, relaxed ... happy. What better bloke to bump into on your morning walk?
Turns out he's down from Perth, surfed as a teenager, gave it up, and then renewed the passion 36 years later.
In that moment I understand.
Surfing the balmy, impossibly blue waters off Western Australia's Margaret River coast is a perfect moment, whether you're a resident of Perth, three hours to the north, or indeed from anywhere.
But I am no surfer, and chances are neither are you. No matter.
This part of the world has attractions to spare.
Take, for example, Geographe Bay, which curves in an effortless sweep eastwards from Cape Naturaliste and north. This geological flick in the continent's southwestern corner and the surrounding waters are richly endowed.
Charted in 1801 by French explorer Nicholas Baudin, who named the bay and the cape after his vessels, this stretch of coast is protected from the ravages of Southern Ocean currents. It is brimming with marine life and is visited by thousands of humpback, southern right and blue whales on their seasonal migrations.
Sadly, it's neither April nor August and whales are not in our sights. But as we step aboard the Naturaliste Charters Whale and Dolphin Eco-tours vessel, I spy dolphin fins breaking the sparkling waters of the bay.
As it happens, our skipper is a Kiwi. In his boisterous, gung-ho fashion, Malcolm Bush informs us that he's an "ex-scarfie made good". Since his days as a Dunedin student he's sailed around the world and crewed on superyachts. Today he assures everyone of the safety and stability of the New Zealand-designed Naiad tour boat, and tells us we're going to feel what it's like to "run guns".
He then floors it across the bay.
The two and a-half hour eco tour includes a valiant attempt to photograph dolphins as they breach in the sublimely calm bay, close-up views of epic limestone sea caves and cliff-faces (Cape Naturaliste is formed from some of the softest, most ancient and amazingly sculpted limestone on the planet - more about this later), pitching around rocks where New Zealand fur seals loll, viewing from afar the holiday homes of Eagle Bay where millionaires loll in pads "as big as supermarkets", and riding the swell around Cape Naturaliste's Sugarloaf Rock, the most photographed natural feature in Western Australia's south.
Malcolm talks of the sharks that visit Bunker Bay, (which on occasion catch surfers unaware), and the no fewer than 45 shipwrecks between Cape Naturaliste and Cape Leeuwinto the south.
I imagine returning someday to see mighty whale tails break the waves, then shoving my camera under the indispensable complimentary spray jacket, I secure my headscarf and hold on as we "run guns" back to sheltered waters.
All in all an exhilarating morning - and in good time for lunch and a cold beer.
Cue The Eagle Bay Brewing Company. It's a recent addition to the half dozen or so craft beer breweries in the Margaret River area, overlooking the parched paddocks of the owner's family farm.
The brewer, 28-year-old Nick d'Espeissis, whose CV includes time at the Queenstown and Christchurch Dux de Lux boutique breweries, forsook toiling on his father's farm to build this thoroughly modern venue, in cahoots with his two siblings. It houses a relaxed alfresco-style restaurant, a shop, and a 1000-litre micro-brewery.
With a menu aimed at complementing the beer, an organic kitchen garden, and a 20-year-old vineyard producing wine just for the restaurant and shop, this is a brilliant spot to reflect on the morning's adventure and prepare for the afternoon.
Within a minute we're each presented with a wooden slab containing six inset glasses exhibiting the range of beers on tap. Nick, a keen home brewer from age 17, oversees this tasting of his latest ales.
Each takes its name from the style it's based on. A kolsch to begin, followed by a "single batch" pilsner, a Vienna, a mild ale, a pale ale and an extra special bitter. For an occasional beer drinker like myself it's a selective journey, the eventual levels in the glasses a telling tale of what appeals. I drain the mild ale with its distinctive berry notes and ask Nick if he brews a dark beer. The resulting glass of stout matches perfectly my plate of rare smoked kangaroo, spiced nectarine and cashew chutney and coriander salad.
Well fed and watered, we turn our backs on the sun and head for what can only be described as a subterranean cathedral.
Behold stalactites, stalagmites and a host of wondrous limestone formations formed more than two million years ago. Water from tree roots has leached over epochs to form remarkable underground sculptures, gently coloured by tannins in the soil.
Ngilgi (pronounced Neelgee) Cave at Yallingup is the most accessible and spectacular of about 300 caves between capes Naturaliste and Leeuwin.
It's a vast labyrinth with a depth of 45m. At the bottom of the largest chamber it's suggested we lie on our backs, shut our eyes for a minute and then look up. The effect is disorientating and utterly amazing as the points of thousands of stalactites make for a kind of primordial kaleidoscope.
Ngilgi Cave became public property in 1899, when one Edward Dawson stumbled upon it. Of course he wasn't the first human to know about this natural wonderland - the Aboriginal Wardandi people claim custodianship of the region's caves over thousands of years.
But as Dawson's torch lit the underground caverns, it sparked the beginning of tourism in Western Australia's south and became his livelihood for the next four decades.
Somehow he managed to sell the cave as a romantic escape and honeymooners in their droves travelled the four days from Perth to clamber down in their crinolines and Sunday-best suits.
So if travel is a test of a relationship's staying power, this would have been the ultimate trial. Nothing says I love you like exploring a cramped, dripping hole in the ground in cumbersome clothes. So wooed were many by the incredible cave formations, one crevice was named "Cupid's Corner". Today a little sign hints at intimate relations and while a crinoline in a cave may have offered some protection from amorous advances, I can't help but guess at how many conceptions took place.
Anyway, evidence of the Victorian honeymooners endures in Ngilgi in the form of snapped-off stalactites. It will take millions of years for them to extend to rounded points again and just a touch from the oils on a human hand can retard their growth by millennia. Needless to say, the caves of Cape Naturaliste are well protected these days with a range of self-guided, guided and specialist spelunking expeditions on offer. They truly are an amazing sight.
• Jane Avery travelled courtesy of Tourism Western Australia
If you go
NGILGI CAVE
Prices vary depending on the tour.
These are just three of eight tour packages.
$20 for the semi-guided Cave Show Tour, $69 for the Explorer Adventure Tour and $142 for the Ultimate Ngilgi Adventure Tour (four hours long with a challenging degree of difficulty)
Email ngilgi@geographebay.com
Website www.geographebay.com
Phone +61 8 9756 6173
Opening hours
School holidays/long weekends: 9.30am-5pm (first tour 10am) Last entry to Ngilgi Cave 4pm.
December/January school holidays:9.30am-5pm (first tour 10am)Last entry to Ngilgi Cave 4pm All other times 9.30am to 4.30pm (first tour 10am) Last entry to Ngilgi Cave 3.30pm.
