The Southwest Corner – Part One (Bunbury to Dunsborough)

We knew this leg of the trip was going to be absolutely full of amazing places to eat and drink, especially around Margaret River. We didn’t know that Margaret River is just one foodie/wine-lovers destination in what’s known as the Southwest Corner of Western Australia (W.A.), and that there was an absolute over-abundance of drinking and eating ahead of us, with wineries, breweries, dairies and chocolateries just a stone’s throw from each other.

Instead of our usual map of what’s covered in this blog post, here are a couple of maps of the Margaret River region and Southwest Corner, that we used heavily on our travels! I don’t think it’s possible to zoom in enough to see just how MUCH there is in this region. There’s no way to cover it all off in just one journey – we’ll definitely need to come back.

This is a map of the whole Southwest region – no wonder it took us a month to get out of there!

And here’s a bit more detail of the Margaret River region in particular.

And this is our whole trip so far – the green line is our Southwest Corner route. And the sneaky blue dot shows you where we are (Esperance) as of the writing of this post!

Well, now that we’ve got the geography lesson down, join us in this blog post, as we get thoroughly educated by the Southwest Corner.

We started off our lessons just outside of Bunbury, a small coastal town about 174km south of Perth. There’s a brewery near there called Old Coast Road Brewery, and this lovely establishment was our first introduction to the beer-stravaganza that awaited.

Nick’s tasting paddle, and my beer (probably a wimpy lager)

Continuing on to explore Bunbury itself, we found an adorable little cafe precinct by the water, with a microbrewery of its own called Mash, and a colourful candy store where they still pull their own salt water taffy (appropriately called Taffy’s). The taffy-puller today was an American who had lived in Australia for over 50 years (you really never lose your accent, unless you try).

This machine was really cool – it cut the big piece into bite-sized pieces and automatically wrapped them!

Bunbury, naturally, also has beautiful white sand and turquoise water beaches. I hope this doesn’t sound blasé – but you should assume that every Aussie coastal town has a beautiful beach. Well, except Melbourne. 😉

That night, our Bunbury entertainment was their “Christmas Carols in the Park”, a free concert and pop-up market. Since moving to Australia, I’ve found we get into the Christmas spirit later and later in the year. In Ottawa I’d be playing Christmas songs by the beginning of October because I love them so much, and I suppose it’s cold and snowy, which puts me in the mood. But in Australia, Christmas often hits us a little unexpectedly…like this concert.

It also makes us giggle a bit to see Aussies singing about Winter Wonderlands while wearing T-shirts.

Near to Bunbury is a wine-and-food region called Ferguson Valley, also home to the very odd, yet quaint, Gnomesville: an area in the forest where people have lined the paths and clearings with garden gnomes. There are some very innovative scenes including a soccer game, and a Shakespeare play (or at least I suppose I imagined it was Shakespeare). SO MANY GNOMES live here – they stretch as far as the eye can see.

It was an interesting introduction to the region, which we found to be a little more quirky and a little less polished than Margaret River (or Margs as the locals call it). If you’re familiar with California wine regions, we thought of Margs as similar to Napa, and Ferguson Valley as similar to Livermore. Or at least, how we knew Napa and Livermore in 2012-2014 when we lived in California.

Near Gnomesville is the Bush Shack Brewery, recently renamed from Moody Cow Brewery. They had a great set of beers for tasting, and a first for us – a round pool table! Of course we had to have a game (and as usual Nick kicked my butt).

Having a game of pool – the 8 ball needs to be sunk in the middle hole

We also checked out a nearby winery for lunch, St Aidan Wines, where we enjoyed this lovely view and lunch and a glass of wine. By the way – I know what you’re thinking – aren’t we driving everywhere between these places?? The answer is yes – but we take turns tasting. So for example, Nick got to have a tasting paddle and a pint at the brewery, and I had a couple glasses of wine at the winery. It works out really well!

Having sampled our first tastes of quirkiness, wine, and beer in the region, we camped for a couple of nights at an area called Potter’s Gorge – another National Park campground, this one situated on a dam, with lovely forest surrounds.

Camp Breakfast – yoghurt, berries, and trail mix (and of course coffee!)

Our next destination was Busselton, population 37,000. Busselton’s main tourist draw is the Busselton Jetty, a 1.8km jetty featuring a mini train, lots of great snorkeling accessible by just jumping off the sides of the pier, and an underwater observatory at the end (one of only five or six in the world, depending on which sign we read – and amazingly enough we’ve been to one other, at Milford Sound in New Zealand!)

On the train out to the end of the Busselton Jetty

An example of the awesome coral and fish at the underwater observatory

After Busselton, we were excited to head to Dunsborough to meet a friend from Canada who has been living over here in Australia for two years, but never near Sydney, so we’ve never managed to link up with him until now.

Canadians (and honorary Canadian) on the town!

Mike and his girlfriend Emma had tons of recommendations for the region, which we added to our own already huge list. We try to keep our posts to around 1,000 words, and this one is already nearing 1200, so you’ll have to tune in for part two and explore with us!