6 Night Extra Long Weekend In Margaret River

Photo Credit: Dr. Catherine Hyatt

Best Bits

The surf was the highlight to me - usually if you’ve decided in advance to camp for a weekend, regardless of the forcast, you’ll arrive to find the sea is flat as a pancake. But this time we scored waves every day and my shoulders were sore for a couple of weeks!

Worst Bits

Finding out that Contos is no longer first in best dressed, finding out that no wineries or breweries are open on Good Friday, and the campground filling up beyond capacity over the long weekend. Needless to say, none of the above detracted from a wonderful weekend.

Trip Dates and Comments on Timing

March — Just don’t go camping down in Margs on a long weekend, ESPECIALLY not Easter weekend. If you want a long weekend in Margs, take a random Monday off work, and enjoy it without the crowds.

Arrival Logistics

I drove south from Perth, 4 hours, and arrived at Point Road campground.

General Overview of Itinerary

Camp, cook brekkie, surf, lunch at a brewery, spend the afternoon at wineries in the rain, surf again, then back to the campsite to cook dinner.

Photo Credit: Dr. Catherine Hyatt

Main Activities

Camping, Food, National Parks, Surfing, Wine tasting

Food and Drink Highlights

The pizza at Colonial Brewery is excellent, but you can’t beat a camping breakfast cooked with friends, and the toast done over an open fire.

Photo credit: Britt Suze

Essential Packing for this Trip

A tarp and some ropes to keep the rain off! Other than that, your standard camping gear will suffice.

Sam’s experience:

Oh, the pressure of a long weekend and trying to secure a campsite near Margaret River! For 14 people! At Easter!

Easier said than done… Fortunately, I have the benefit of a rather flexible office location, so it was decided that the best thing to do was to send an advance party down on Tuesday night and snag a spot.

Photo Credit: Dr. Catherine Hyatt

The plan worked perfectly! Well, almost. We’d planned to stay at Contos campground as it’s the easiest DPAW campsite to access with a 2wd, and the closest to the main wineries. But, horror of horrors! It turns out that Contos is now a bookable campground with WIFI… What?! That’s gross!

Naturally, it being the Easter weekend, it was chocca, but the ranger was nice enough to not laugh in my face about it.

So, to Point Road it was! Although the advance party had 4x4s, not everyone in the group scheduled to arrive on the Thursday night did, and the track in was pretty bumpy. At least when we arrived at the campground it was blissfully empty! We’d just have to figure out how to get the 2wds in on the night.

A perfectly clear night gave way to a gloriously sunny day the next day. The only option was to take the office to the beach. Wednesday is a working day after all! The track to the beach (Boranup) was seriously rough and rutted, but the old Troopy handled it with aplomb. Back in the day I have taken Vitaras and X-Trails down there; unfortunately those days are behind us now I think. High clearance required.

An extremely productive morning of work later, the advance party left the beach and headed to the wineries to scout out which (if any) would be open on Good Friday. Unfortunately the answer was none of them! It has always baffled me that the majority of wineries in the Margaret River region are closed on public holidays. Surely they would be among the biggest days of the year for business?!

Oh well. We stocked up on supplies and headed back to the campground instead.

We’d surfed at Boranup that morning and it hadn’t been great - but the best was yet to come! For the next four days over the Easter weekend, the swell pumped, the wind dropped, and we were able to surf twice a day for the next four days. Epic.

Rumours of heavy rain become more and more frequent the closer the weekend got, and in the end, I think a bit of bad weather did us a favour, as it kept the crowds a little bit lower both in and out of the water. Don’t get me wrong, it was still really busy. I was just shocked the surf breaks weren’t busier, but for some reason folks don’t like padding out in the rain. Go figure! Sure we had a few showers, but we also had some glorious sunny spells too.

Photo Credit: Dr. Catherine Hyatt

When the rest of the group finally arrived on Friday morning it turned out to be trivial getting the 2wds down the track. In fact, the only person who got stuck at any point was me, in the biggest car by far! Just goes to show you’ve got to pay attention all the time offroad. It was easy enough to get unstuck though.

Friday night the rains did descend but I actually love camping in the rain! We had plenty of tarps to rig up a semi dry dining room, and an impressive selection of cheeses as an entree before the main course; a whole box of ripe mangoes. When in Rome!

The rest of the weekend was taken up by a routine I wouldn’t mind adopting full time: We camped, surfed, wine tasted, lunched at breweries, surfed again, more wine tasting, and finally camped again for the night. Just perfect. The weather was crazy - big rain showers alternated with glorious sunshine, making for a weird wardrobe requirement day to day, but who cares when you’re camping?!

Photo Credit: Appin Williamson

Here’s a breakdown of the wineries / breweries we visited:

Voyager Estate — it was raining really hard so we ended up spending a while here. Fortunately they have an exhibiton about the Dutch East India Trading Company, which sparked a very interesting discussion with our travelling expert on the VOC, Viscount Ser David Beros, so I was happy! Don’t think I even tried the wine in the end, and I don’t remember anyone in the group buying anything. Fancy wine in a fancy building, go for the gallery though.

Leeuwin Estate — another of the fancier wineries, our rain jackets were frowned upon at the cellar door, despite the downpour going on right outside. Didn’t buy anything out of principle at being frowned upon.

Colonial Brewery — good beer, great pizza, sunshine, pony rides, live music. No better way to enjoy lunch on Easter Sunday. Will be back and would recommend to a friend.

House of Cards — my new favourite winery! Great fun at the cellar door, very interesting and informative tasting notes, tasty wines, right next to a chocolate factory (the nice one, not the kids one!). What’s not to like?! Came away with a good few bottles from here and thoroughly enjoyed them at home.

Carpe Diem — perhaps the best cellar door in the whole of the South West. I have spent over 2 hours tasting here before, and come away roaring drunk! This time it was just a pit stop to resupply. The owner Gianfranco is a laugh and his right hand man Josh is a great bloke too. The cellar door is probably the most understated I’ve been to, which is cool, because you’re there for wine, not pomp! Carpe Diem isn’t on the map or the signposts, so head down Johnson Road in Wilyabrup and keep your eyes peeled for a very small sign…

After three days of the best routine in the world, reluctantly we packed up and started working our way back north to Perth. After a final wine stop (at House of Cards, my new favourite winery) we had a swim and a boulder at Canal Rocks, then a picnic in Dunsborough before caving in to the drive (see what I did there… Caving in to the drive… Caves Road… Ok, moving on). We definitely got the most out of a wet weekend in the Margaret River region! I suppose it helps when your weekend is 6 days long ; )

About The Traveller

Gender & Age Range
Male, 25 - 35

I’m from
North Devon, UK

I live in
Perth, WA

My favourite trip as of late
Skiing in the French Alps

Travelling Style
Book the first night and wing it from there!

I like to go on the following types of trips
Adventure, 4x4, Beaches, Hiking, Surfing, Culture, Scuba Diving, Camping.

It’s a dealbreaker when
There are kids or generators (or, horror… Both!) in the campsite

Continent I know the best
Australasia / Oceania