Friday, 27 August
Most people probably wouldn't choose leftover Beef Vindaloo for breakfast, but then again most people probably wouldn't have chosen it for dinner the night before.
Most people would also probably suspect, given the fact that this was our last day in Margaret River, and we planned to be on the road to Singleton Beach by two at the very latest, Hughesy would have been pencilling in a frantic rush around as many wineries as possible.
That's not, however, the way I was thinking.
For a start we needed to pick up some thank you gifts for friends back east, and I'd already decided that we were going to be lunching, if possible, at Cullen Wines. We hadn't booked, but I figured that if we were there early enough (say, around a quarter to twelve) we should be able to snag a table for two.
We also had to do things like fuel the chariot, so I figured we could take our time, lob at Cullen just after eleven, do the tasting bit and be right at the head of the queue for lunch. After that we could possibly visit somewhere, and there was a possible spot on the highway towards Busselton, so it was more or less a matter of filling in time till Cullen time.
The shopping bit took about as long as you'd expect, fuelling the car wasn't a hassle, and just after ten we were on the road. There was, of course, a contingency plan, and as we turned onto Metricup Road I was navigating towards Fermoy Estate, a winery described by Mr Halliday as happy to keep a relatively low profile, however difficult that may be given the quality of the wines. Sounded like my kind of place. There was a possible second fall back in Pierro, but I figured Fermoy would probably do in the pre-Cullen department.