I recently discovered, hidden away in the great southern region of Western Australia is an abundance of fresh produce, amazing wines, crystal clear beaches, spectacular forests, animal farms and passionate people doing what they love everyday.
I was excited to have the opportunity to explore this gorgeous region and preview what the local businesses had to offer thanks to Taste Great Southern WA, a month-long food and wine festival set to launch February 22 (details in my Perth foodie latest news & events section).
Although I have lived in Perth all my life, burger boy and I hadn’t considered visiting Western Australia’s Great Southern region even though we’ve heard how beautiful it is. Time is precious and we had little of it with the business and my full time day job at the time so WA’s Great Southern region never made it to our holiday destination consideration set – we would travel as far as Margaret River or jump on a plane to Bali / the eastern states.
Without experiencing WA’s Great Southern region first hand, I didn’t know what beauty I was missing out on. Now after a week exploring this beautiful region, I would drive back there in a heartbeat, every minute of that 5-hour drive was worth it.
We left for Perth on the Tuesday and traveled from Albany to Denmark passing through Pemberton and Bridgetown on the way home the Friday morning. In this short time, I had the pleasure and opportunity to meet the owners of a spectrum of local food businesses. I was absolutely inspired by the passion they had for what they do and their love for the region’s produce. To me, it was a reminder that if you love what you do, whatever it may be it will succeed with hard work. These inspiring foodies I met were living proof.
If you had been following my Taste Great Southern WA journey on twitter, facebook and instagram, you would have seen photos of some of the gorgeous people burger boy and I have met and the venues we explored.
Blog posts of my foodie interviews and Taste Great Southern WA experience will be featured on foodie cravings over the next couple of weeks. Watch this space or subscribe to get foodie cravings all the time to be notified of when these new posts are up.
In the meantime, here’s some of my Taste Great Southern WA top 5 highlights…
TGS2014 Highlight #1 – Exploring the Aviary at The Old Marron Farm and eating marrons & yabbies for the first time
TGS2014 Highlight #2 – Enjoying the beauty of Forest Hill Vineyard and the amazing food cooked for us by Pepper & Salt Restaurant owner and head chef, Silas.
TGS2014 Highlight #3 Waking up every morning to our beautiful natural surroundings and making our own breakfast using produce from Tree Elle Retreat’s Secret Garden.
TGS2014 Highlight #4 Meeting Pamela and Murray of Oranje Tractor – it was inspiring to hear how Oranje Tractor minimises the impact on the environment through growing grapes organically and by only using local produce from within 513km radius of Albany for their Enoteca 513R Cafe.
TGS2014 Highlight #5 Hearing Three Anchor’s Head Chef Amy Hamilton’s story of how she started out as a dishie at Must Wine Bar and grew to become the amazing chef she is today under one of my favourite Perth chef’s Russell Blaike’s mentorship.
It was also quite amusing to watch burger boy roll out of Three Anchors after polishing two massive entrees and this mega burger…
