Mt. Barker, Western Australia

A week before Christmas, we headed down south to the Mount Barker region of Western Australia. Mt. Barker is a less well known wine region in WA (Margaret River being the more famous).

We stayed on a small farm with goats, sheep, alpacas, cows and chickens. There were four things that stand out from our stay in Mt. Barker:

1. Our chalet had a hot tub out on the verandah. Ahhhhhh.

2. We finally saw wild kangaroos! Throughout our trip we had been searching, searching for roos in the wild -- to no avail. We saw lots of tracks and other evidence of roos and we got to pet kangaroos at the zoo, but no sightings of the real, live, wild thing. In Mt. Barker, as dusk settled on the rolling hills, the roos came out. Every night we'd watch them hop across the horizon. Perhaps our favorite sighting (at least for Clint and Boo) was the one from the hot tub.

3. Every morning the kids helped the owners of the farm feed the animals. The kids made friends with Elmo the alpaca, Bacon the pig (yikes) and Meg and Molly, the horses. The kids tramped off alone to the morning animal feeding, allowing their grateful parents some quality time with their coffee mugs on the verandah.


4. Mt. Barker also provides access to two lovely national parks. We enjoyed a great hike up to Castle Rock in Porongurup National Park. The hike, though only 3 km long, was very challenging. The final 200 meters involved rock climbing, straddling a crevasse and scaling a chain ladder. The view from the top, forty km straight south to the dark blue Southern Ocean, was stunning. And the kids got enormous satisfaction from making it to the top!