Asia Mega Tour 2026 - Margret River Wine Tasting, Gastronomy, and Photography

2B has been very excited about this trip to Australia as the Margret River region is a noted wine area with a food culture to match. As he is big into both, he has had a boatload of wine tastings and meals lined up. Sadly, I, who was to be his primary sidekick (as I do like wine, though am not the oenophile he is, and I do like food) have come into the trip crippled due to the extreme diet restrictions associated with the incurring gout. But there is still plenty of it on our agenda and Sunday was our big first day with a wine tasting and a separate tasting meal with wine pairings. 

At the same time, Wife and I are really into our photographic mode. She has been watching various YouTube videos and I have been peeking in getting my own ideas. So we combined our visit with to the wineries with some photography as well.

 Wine Tasting

 

 

Grapes = Wine

 

 Very enthusiastic tasting presenter at a winery featuring biodynamic wine making. You can read about it via the link and make your own conclusions.

 Attentive audience

 

 

 Then we moved to the second winery which had restaurant where we did the tasting menu with wine pairings. I will admit that modern gastronomy lost me a number of decades ago when they developed the current form of the tasting menu. I find the food to be over engineered, with combinations of flavors and textures that are forced rather than natural. Plus there is a self-congratulatory aspect to the whole presentation that to me detracts from the food. You can contact me directly if you want me to be less restrained about my opinion. 

In this case, everything was further affected because of the need to adjust my particular tasting to avoid the gout unfriendly foods. Plus, I needed to be very restrained on the amount that I was drinking. I honestly don't even remember a 10th of what was described that we ate, THOUGH it was very photogenic. 

The counter point to the food and wine was The Incredibly Lovely Wait Staff. We had two primary servers. One was a young woman from Argentina who had lived in Wyoming and knew all about New Mexico (we joked that she combined Gaucho with Cowboy). The other was a young man from Italy (Ancona where we have visited). In fact, almost every wait staff we've met on this trip is from somewhere other than Australia. Turns out there is a severe shortage of young people to do these jobs, and people from other countries can make a lot more, working much less hours, with a great lifestyle doing wait staff work in Australia

The Meal

 Even the butter for the bread was done artistically

 

 This was some kind of appetizer (not amuse, that was something else I didn't take a picture of) that was seafood oriented.

 

This was a different one met for the gout restricted with no seafood

 

 Next was a course with raw fish with a horseradish cream and something else. I was actually pretty good too

 

 For some reason they decided to serve the meat course which was some kind of slow cooked beef with a beet on the side

I had one bite of Wife's and it was very good also.

 

 For the gout afflicted...just the beet 😢

 

 Then came the 'palate cleanser'. Since I am ranting, I see no purpose to palate cleansers in general. Every time I hear the word, I think I'm at the dentist. This one was very pretty but was way too sweet.

 

 We had a fish course next (which seemed like it should have preceded the meat course but they wanted to show of their Chardonnay). The fish was good but I forgot to take a picture.

Then came dessert that I cannot remember the components of at all but again was actually very good.

 

On to...PHOTOGRAPHY

 

One of the things I got from sessions mentioned above is working with a single lens. I decided to use the fish eye lens again

 

Wine tasting 

 

 

Bark

 

 

Leaf

 

 

Table

 

 

Circular garden with Photographer and Dowager Leader

 

 

Venerable Pooh Lee Shah

 

 

Bell

 

 

Consort de Pooh Lee Shah

 

 

Flowers

 

 

Kumquats

 

 

Asia Mega Tour 2026 - Since When Is Australia In Asia?

The more fact checking of the blogs readers might state - "Hey de-I, I don't want to be a party pooper but last time I looked Australia is NOT in Asia. It is its own continent. So why the heck isn't your current series entitled "Asia-Australia Mega Tour 2026?" Well the truth is I forgot to correctly title it in the beginning and to change it now would mean going back and editing 18 individual posts and I haven't gotten up the motivation to change it yet. But now that I have been outed, I might have to do it. 

Anyway, back to the action!

 Last day in Phuket

My partner in travel crime! 

 

 We went to an actual 'tourist restaurant' for our last meal. Sadly, like most tourist restaurants, it had pretty food that was toned down for the international market. However, these deep fried prawns were great.

 

 The less than pleasant KL interlude

We had decided to do an overnight in Kuala Lumpur to rather than have a very long travel day going from Phuket to Perth Australia. In our attempt to seek out good sleep, we decided to get an apartment with multiple bedrooms rather than our regular Sama Sama airport hotel. But we were also trying to save money and when you cheap out you get...a place that stunk had hardly any amenities, and little in the way of furniture.

Wife making the best of the one couch using the high chair as her end table. Don't be fooled by the smile. She and I were pissed.

 

We had planned to hang out in this apartment until check out time at Noon then go to the airport as our flight didn't leave until almost 8pm. But we were so bummed by the apartment that we got out of there as soon as we woke up. At the airport, we were able to check in despite being so early but were told we couldn't get into the business class lounge until two hours before flight time. Fortunately we have membership in another airport club company and were able to go to different lounge first. There we were met by the #2 clan who had just flown from Medan. We did got to the Malaysia Airlines Golden Lounge early and this time they let us in. They had some interesting food options including these two made to order soups. But don't ask me their names.

 

The timing of our flight from to Perth, Australia had us arriving at 1:30am. We did get a hotel for the stub of the night that was left which was welcome. But it was still a pretty tired crew in the morning. I went off with 2B to get our rental vehicle. We had a most helpful person at the rental company desk who helped us get a larger vehicle for all our luggage. This was the first of many pleasant people exchanges we've had so far on this trip. To the hotel, pack up the vehicle and off for the 3+ hour drive to Gracetown, a beach front community in the famous wine region of Margret River. 

 We'd barely gotten out of the hotel when 2B goes to adjust the rear view mirror when...

 

 It falls off. 2B is trying to navigate driving on the left for the first time in a long time, with a huge vehicle, in busy traffic, on a road with narrow lanes, all while four other people are trying to suggest what the heck we should do. We pulled off the road, tried to reattach it and failed. We decided to push on with our trip.

We got to the town of Busselton which is only 45 minutes from our destination. We found a location for the rental car company. But it was just a franchise operation operating from another business with no one actually there. However the nice person in the office let us all use the office toilet. 

The next idea was to find a dealership for the make of the rental. This was successfully found. A maintenance person, took time to come out, look at the situation, and declare he really didn't have an idea of how to deal with it. But they recommended a glass company not far away. 

 Happy travelers? It's a fraud. We were all frustrated.

 

 We got to the glass company and again, the people were really friendly. A tech came out and said, "Sure, I know how to fix this. We just glue it on."

 

 Which he promptly did in about 10 minutes telling us to "Be gentle with it."

We finally made it to the rental.

 

 

We ran into Margret River to buy provisions and had a French picnic meal with us all being exhausted.

 On Saturday morning we were off to the weekly farmers' market in Margret River. Normally I'm pretty skeptical of farmers' markets as a lot of the produce sold is being purchased from commercial production. But it was very obvious looking at what was offered here that the produce was local and seasonal. AND we met a lot of interesting and friendly people.

This guy actually knew where New Mexico was! His family had roots back to Russia who emigrated to the U.S. the turn of the 19th/20th century and made their way to Arizona to live. They were pacifists and found the U.S. to not be friendly to that life choice and them moved on to Margret River Western Australia.

 

 The young lady in this picture heard we were interested in seeing the local Australian Rules Football team and became very animated because a lot of her friends are fans or are involved playing.

 

 Wife enjoying a high quality beef filled roll

 

 Vendor of said roll

 

 2B perusing the market options

 

 #2 purchasing organic beef and lamb for us to grill. The guy turned out to be from New Zealand and we discussed the tough state of affairs currently in the country.

 

 2.4 enthusiastic about the market

 

SIGNS OF THE WORLD

  'Down Under' Special 

 You want high quality eggs? This is the place to come.

 

We all know grass fed garlic is the best

 

 Education of their elder population is extremely important in Western Australia

 

 You know fire danger is significant when 'High' is the second to the lowest rating you go all the way up to Catastrophic.

 

 There be secret alien type things going on in Western Australia as well as Nevada USA

 

 Clearly a place for people like me