Anniversary Weekend in the Margaret River Region

An anniversary is a strange thing to plan. The temptation is to book the most expensive room and hope the place does the work. Down here, the place does do the work, but only if you let it.

Photo: Michelle Corcoran, CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Pamela and I have been together long enough that we've stopped trying to outdo previous anniversaries. The good ones, the ones we remember, are mostly the same shape: a slow Friday, a Saturday that drifts, a Sunday with a long lunch. The trick is not to fill the time. Down here that's easier than it sounds.

Coming down to mark something (twenty years, thirty, the first one), this is the weekend I'd plan for you.

Google Maps sometimes misdirects via Wildwood Rd. Stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd. First time on this stretch, do the last hour with the music off. The country between Busselton and Yallingup deserves a proper look.

There are two honest answers, and they're different rooms in the same conversation.

Injidup Spa Retreat is the one most people are quietly hoping someone will recommend. Ten adults-only villas on a clifftop above Injidup Bay, each with a private plunge pool and a jarrah deck looking out at the Indian Ocean. It is not cheap. The two-night anniversary package in winter sits around $1500 for two: the villa, a couples treatment, a bottle of red, and a hamper. In the warmer months you're looking at $700 a night and up. To mark a specific year, this is the room. The bush is so thick around the villas you don't see another building. Friends of ours have been going back every September for a decade. They don't book anywhere else.

Smiths Beach Resort is the other call. Less precious, more flexible, and the beach is fifty metres from the door. Lamonts is on site for dinner without driving. Spend the money on the long lunch and a piece of furniture instead, sleep here and put the saving toward something you'll have for the next thirty years.

Photo: Harry Foley, CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The first night should do almost nothing. You've driven from somewhere. Get to the room by four. Open a bottle. Walk to whichever beach is closest (Injidup if you're at the spa, Smiths if you're at the resort) and watch the sun go down without taking a single photograph.

Dinner should be light. Yallingup Woodfired Bread at the Siding for pizza and a glass of red. Caves House for history with the meal. It's been feeding people since 1903, and the bones of the place haven't been spoiled. Either way, be in bed early. The good morning is tomorrow.

The Margaret River Farmers Market on a Saturday morning. We've been going for years. It's the one fixed thing in our week, anniversary or not.

It's in town, behind the education campus, open eight to noon. Get there by nine and you'll have it to yourselves. Coffee from the Yahava van. Whatever fruit is in season. Bread from one of the bakers, cheese from Margaret River Dairy, flowers from the native stall, and Pam takes a bunch home most weeks. It's not a tourist market dressed up. It's where we shop.

Take the bag back to the room. That's lunch sorted.

If the wind's down, drive back up to Smiths. By ten the light's starting to do its thing on the reef.

Smiths is where I go. Always has been. Small swell, swim. If it's up, walk the headland north. The track climbs onto the dune and from there you can see the whole bay. Find a spot on the sand and open the market bag. Bread, cheese, whatever fruit you picked up. A flat white from one of the cafes by the carpark for the ones who didn't drink enough at the market. Smith’s Beach, properly

This is also when most couples wander into the gallery. We're on Blythe Rd, twelve minutes from Injidup, eight from Smiths. Pamela curates the space and on a Saturday late morning the light through the jarrah walls is one of the quieter pleasures of the weekend. Thinking about marking the anniversary with something you'll have for the rest of your life (a side table, a bowl, a piece bigger than that), Saturday is a fine day to start the conversation. I'll be in the workshop through the viewing window. No pressure, no pitch. Just come in and look. heirloom gifts for the big occasions

The mistake people make on an anniversary weekend down here is trying to do five wineries in a day. By the fourth one you're tired and you've stopped tasting anything. Pick one. Stay for two hours.

For the centrepiece of the weekend, book Voyager Estate degustation. It's forty minutes south, properly grand, and the Discovery menu sits around $150 a head without wine. They don't do anything by halves. Go, and don't book anything else for the day. You won't want to.

Lunch closer to home, book lunch at Vasse Felix. Fifteen minutes from Yallingup. The kitchen has been good for years. Brendan Pratt has been running it for over six, and he's done time at The Fat Duck. The room is calm, the wine is theirs, and the Holmes a Court gallery upstairs is worth half an hour after the bill arrives.

For a quieter cellar door, Clairault Streicker do a vineyard kitchen lunch around $70 a head, three courses, and the view across the vines is the right kind of grand. my five favourite wineries near here

Photo: Vasse Felix, CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The best sunset within a short drive is Canal Rocks. Ten minutes north of Smiths. The granite channels there hold the swell, and on a still evening the light does things to the water I won't try to describe. Park at the top, walk down to the bridge, stay until it's properly dark.

For dinner, the rule on an anniversary night is: don't drive far. After Voyager for lunch, you're not eating a proper dinner anyway. A board of cheese and another glass on the deck is the right call. Skipped lunch or kept it light, drive into Dunsborough for Yarri, or stay at Lamonts at Smiths. Book ahead. Yallingup itself doesn't have many restaurants, and that's a feature, not a bug.

The good anniversaries aren't the ones where everything is bigger. They're the ones where you've stopped checking the time.

Sleep in. This is a rule.

Coffee on the deck at Injidup. Walk to the beach at Smiths. By ten, with it in you, do one short walk. The Cape to Cape between Smiths and Canal Rocks is an hour each way and shows you the coast properly. Knees done, the short loop at Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse takes half an hour and the views over Geographe Bay are the kind that make you remember why you came.

Between September and December you'll see whales from the lighthouse. They turn up like they're meant to.

A long lunch is the right way to end the weekend.

The pub at Caves House does a proper Sunday lunch in the beer garden. Weather's right and the band's on, that's the call. Aravina Estate has a quieter lunch room with views over the dam, fifteen minutes back toward Busselton, and sets you up nicely for the drive home. Or, with the energy for one more long table, Wills Domain in Yallingup proper.

Photo: David Stanley, CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

I'll say this once and then leave it alone.

Most of what people buy each other for anniversaries gets used for a year and then sits in a cupboard. The pieces I make are different. A jarrah table, a marri side board, a small bowl with the year turned into the underside. These are things that move with you, that show up in the photographs of every Christmas after this one, that your kids end up arguing about who inherits.

It's not for everyone, and I don't try to sell it like that. But to mark something specific, the bench is on Blythe Rd, eight minutes from Smiths, and Pam will make you a coffee while you look. gifts that outlast the occasion

Don't fill the weekend. The anniversaries Pam and I remember aren't the ones we planned hardest. They're the ones where we ran out of plans by Saturday afternoon and found ourselves on the sand at Smiths with a bottle and a piece of bread from the market, watching the light come down.

That's the weekend. Everything else is just framing.