Boy, where do I even start in explaining this one? Pull up a chair, this may take a while. First, you need to know that we're in the township of Cowaramup, some 12km north of Margaret River on our way back home (via Perth) on the last day of our holiday.

Dammit, dammit to a very hot place, but I digress.

Cows are Cowaramup's thing. No, the town wasn't named after bovines but there were cattle herds there and they were taken to the town's heart. (There was also a sculpture competition involved which is way too long to explain here.) Everywhere you go in Cowaramup there are statues of cows, standing, lying down, grazing, whatever. You can generally tell when someone is from here because a lot of the number plates of the cars in town are in the form "xx COW" (where xx is a number) on custom plates which have mottos like "Cowaramup, Udderly Divine". The local gift store is called Mukau and if you are there I do recommend a visit. We got a fridge magnet with "Be Nice To Udders" next to a bovine nose lunging at the reader, and a T Shirt with a similar face over the caption "Deja Moo, The Distinct Feeling That You've Seen This Bull Shirt Before". (Which I should have obtained a few of for wearing at work, but I again digress.) As a civic marketing project it's one of the best I've seen. I defy you to drive through Cowaramup without stopping, and probably buying something, at least once.

Meanwhile, back in Margaret River (stay with me here...) there is a winery named "Laurance of Margaret River" which is more than just a winery. There's a restaurant there, artworks of various kinds, and they host shows. I would have liked to have visited it, had we known about it and had we had maybe a week or two in Margaret River. Which I wish we'd had. And I reiterate, "dammit". One of the key sculptures in the grounds of Laurance is of a golden woman in a pre-swan dive pose on top of an electric blue pole in the centre of the lake. The sculpture was controversial, the council having been peeved that no planning approval was obtained but the owner eventually got to keep it. Some people think it's tacky, others think it's iconic. It's called... "Free As A Bird". Some local wags have re-christened it as "Chick On A Stick". Still with me?

Right, back to Cowaramup, then. The community commissioned sculptor Ron Roozen to do a parody of "Free As A Bird" named, you guessed it, "Free As A Cow".

Or as this one has been re-christened... "Roast On A Post".