The first day on the road – the road to Margaret River

Early morning start, after a short night. I was eager to leave the city behind and head south. I stopped for a quick breakfast after refueling the van at a fuel station in Naval Base. A toasted filled turkish (Panini) and a cappuccino for breakfast – hell have I relaxed food related principles in the last few days! That needs to get back on track very soon, but maybe not as extreme as I used to stick to it in Perth.

Stopped at the Old Cheddar Cheese factory near Busselton for a light lunch and stocking up some cheese. The lack of sleep caught up with me and I had a quick snooze and wrote parts of my journal entry for yesterday.

The Margaret River and Geographe bay regions are very beautiful and I like them a lot. It's nice down here and you meet a lot of free spirited people everywhere. I finally made it to Gabriel's Chocolate factory (next to House of Cards winery) and overindulged once more. It's a nice little shop, a lot more personal and with much higher quality products than the big Margaret River Chocolate company outlet. I had a good chat with the lady looking after the store and many delicious tastings of their products and a hefty bill at the checkout counter. Nowadays, 72% dark chocolate tastes like the sweetest of milk chocolates used to taste to my palate. Weird, how you get used to different tastes and the effects of drastically cutting out most of the sugar from you diet has on your body.

Driving down Caves road brought back a lot of great memories, all the wine tastings, the visits of the caves with my family and other visitors over here, the awesome karate training camp last year and so on. I checked in at the Prevelly Camp site and met only lovely people. While the facilities are rather old, the camp ground has many tall trees to give some shade and as we are in mid season, was not very busy.

Putting on my running shoes, I did a quick 5.8km lap to check out the area near by. There were quite a lot of surfers in the water, and some nice waves rolling in.

Lacking  my camera while running, I put in the below shots taken from my last visit to Prevelly, mid 2014:

Back at the camp site and after a much needed stretch and cool shower, I read a bit. Quite interesting what Sir Richard (Branson) notes on Leadership in his latest book, 'TheVirgin Way – How to Listen, Learn, Laugh and Lead'. Richard argues that Leadership is not only the exclusive domain of the people in the C-suite, but that everybody is a leader in some shape or form, be that in the company, amongst your community, peers and family, or clubs etc. Furthermore, he goes on with what resonates strongly with me: “... the only meaningful thing on your business card is your name and your contact information. The title beneath it says nothing about he level of respect you deserve from the person you hand it to – that's all down to what you say and do, or in some cases don't say and do from that point on. Just as seniority is usually just a measure of tenure and has specific linkage to contribution , unfortunately titles have no true bearing on anyone's true ability to lead.” (p. 119)

Having read several of Sir Richard Branson's books, I totally dig what he is saying most of the time. He would be one of the people I'd really like to have dinner and a long conversation with or even visit his island as there would be many more interesting people to talk to!

After another brief nap, Bill stopped by at the camp site heading home from a project in Gracetown. Straight away I got invited to join him and Mary Jo for dinner at their house in Margaret River.

I met Bill and Mary-Jo last year when we did our UWA karate training camp. Bill, black belt in our style of karate, and a former member of the UWA club before he moved to Margaret River, helped organising the camp last year, invited us all over for a fantastic BBQ, walked a part of the Cape to Cape trail along the beach with us and joined some of our training sessions.

Bill and Mary-Jo are fantastic people, I would even say role models that the young generation can look up to for guidance. Bill, originally from the US, has travelled extensively when he was young and has fallen in love 30+ years ago when he visited Western Australia, and stayed. The dedication Bill brings to his karate, he also puts into his music.

Bill & Mary-Jo's dog

 After a fantastic dinner (organic grass fed rump steaks, oven roasted potatoes and pumpkin, a mixed salad and a glass of local Shiraz – finally back to what I consider healthy food!), prepared skilfully by Mary-Jo, we had a long discussion about many topics. Talking with intelligent people who have experienced a lot, travelled a lot and read a lot is always such a pleasure and usually I get he feeling that I'm on he right path in life and have a long way to go.

As Bill got itchy fingers and needed to express his creativity, I brought in my guitar and Bill taught me some great things to practice on. I haven't seen such a skilled guitar player for ages (if ever!), and how Bill uses rhythm to express so much in songs left me in awe (and probably with a wide

open mouth). Totally inspiring – thanks a lot! What a start to a 5 months trip around Australia!

Total km traveled: 312