Located a couple hours or so south of Perth, the Margaret River region is beautiful. Lovely green rolling hills, rugged but beautiful coastline, and lots of tourist activities to enjoy. Yes, this place is loaded with fine dining, wineries, fancy cottages, chalets and resort accommodation, day spa’s, family fun parks and mazes, and lots of yummy food. Sure, a lot of that is wasted on us, especially when travelling in the motorhome, but we still had a great time.

To help you get the picture lets relate back to Brissy again: perhaps think of Maleny and Montville, enlarged greatly in terms of number of attractions and in area (spread out over an entire shire), and then placed on the coastline! Over two days we visited and sampled sugar from: an ice cream factory, chocolate factory, fudge factory, cheese and yoghurt factory, candy factory, and a nougat factory!! And this is isn’t even mentioning our time at some other attractions, national park walks, whale watching, and time we spent on the beach!

The shire of Busselton is run with tourism as its main focus. Margaret River is the name of one of the towns in the area, but is also the ‘brand name’ for the region of a whole (ie. what people refer to the region as). The Busselton township itself was the first place visited, a bustling town with lots of cafes, art galleries and the like, with a pretty shoreline.

Then it was out to Cape Naturaliste, but on the way we had to stop in at Simmo’s Icecreamery for some fancy Icecreams! I had two flavours: Cinnamon Ginger, and Blueberry Meringue!!

Nicole had been given the impression by someone that the drive out to Cape Naturaliste, within the Leeuwin Naturaliste National Park, was one of the most beautiful in Australia. Whilst it was pretty it certainly wasn’t that good… We combined a couple of walks at the cape, so we got to see the ocean from different views and see whales from the platform. Yes, we saw quite a few whales at different distances from the shore, but we were also quite a distance back (and up high), so it wasn’t a close encounter by any means.

On the way back we dropped into Bunker Bay, and then Sugarloaf Rock (on the other side of the cape). Here we got to see some more whales, but up a fair bit closer this time! Hard to get a decent photo though…

Final stop for the evening, before heading back to the caravan park for the night was Eagle Bay. We missed Meelup Beach, meant to be one of the top beaches in the world, as it was getting late/dark.

Tuesday morning (14/10/14) we headed off again, to have a look at Meelup Beach, but stopped by the town of Dunsborough and had a look around there first.

Having seen along the edge of Geographe Bay, time to head south down the coastline, towards yet more attractions. We initially focused on the coastline, now more exposed and featuring waves/surf and headlands, not just sandy bay beaches.

It was a busy but yummy drive to follow, travelling down through Cowaramup and Margaret River townships and visiting those factories previously mentioned along the way. The country side here is either lush green grass, carefully tended vineyard, or forests of tall trees. Very relaxing driving (especially for me in the passenger seat!).

We finished a lovely day by heading further south and back to the coast, to spend the night at Conto’s Campsite in the Leeuwin Naturaliste National Park (a lot further south than Cape Naturaliste!).