Our first day in this region saw us heading north for a day trip. We drove the 10mins into Margaret River township itself, but didn’t stop as we decided we would come back to that. We continued north along the Bussel Hwy, passing through some quaint little towns and, after about 40mins reached Busselton.
The main attraction we wanted to see here was the long jetty. It seems it is the longest wooden jetty (pier) in the southern hemisphere (whereas the Lucinda jetty in Qld is the longest jetty of any material (in this case steel) in the southern hemisphere). We had some morning tea near the beach and walked over to the shore end of the jetty, but decided not to pay the money to go out onto the jetty (since we’d done that at Canarvon on One Mile Jetty). It was quite busy at the foreshore here (school holidays I guess), so we soaked in the atmosphere for a while, then hopped back in the car.

We then drove southwest along the coast for about 20mins to Dunsborough, the next seaside town. We found the foreshore drive and found a lovely little bay and park which seemed ‘tucked away’ from the crowds. We spent a relaxing and enjoyable hour or so here with the kids playing on the playground and on the sand. It was a bit cold for a swim and they seemed happy without swimming, which was good. We had our sandwiches for lunch here. Eventually we needed to round them up so we could keep going with seeing what we planned to that day.

We drove another 15mins further west then out to Cape Naturaliste, which was the most northwesterly tip of that southwest WA region. There was a lighthouse here which you had to pay to walk out to, so we just took a photo and looked out to the ocean from the carpark.

Next we turned onto Caves Rd (so named because there are a lot of limestone caves in this region) and headed south along the coastline. All the coastline along here is renowned for its surfing beaches. We called into Yalingup, the most northerly township along this stretch of coast. It had some breathtaking views of the ocean as we drove down into the township and we parked at a lookout area and enjoyed the views for a while.

Then we continued south along Caves Rd, passing many wineries and pretty scenery. We planned to head back to Big Valley, but first had promised the kids a treat at a lolly shop in Cowamurup (one of the little towns just north of Margaret River – the owners at Big Valley had told us about it). So we found a road that took us across from Caves road on the west, back to the Bussell Hwy near Cowaramup. We found the shop called Candy Cow (everything in Cowaramup is cow related and there are life size statues of cows all around the town). It was a lovely old fashioned lolly and fudge shop. You could taste test different flavours of fudges. Each of the children chose a bag of lollies of their liking (Lauren kept saying ‘How am I supposed to choose just one?’). Michael and I decided to get something from the bakery as our treat. Then we all headed back to the van park to have our treats (with a cup of tea for me).

The kids enjoyed some time back at the van park. There was a big pine tree right next to our caravan which made a great little cubby house for Hannah and Beth.