Eagle Bay Brewery Day

Eagle Bay Brewing is a twenty-minute drive north of my workshop and it is the easiest good day in the South West.

That is the whole pitch. I am not going to dress it up. You drive up Caves Rd, you turn at Dunsborough, you climb the hill toward Eagle Bay, you sit under the trees with a paddle of beer and something off the woodfired oven, and then you wander back down to the coast on the long way home. Half the day is the brewery. The other half is the country between the brewery and Yallingup, which is some of the best country there is.

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

I have been making this trip since 1982. The brewery has only been part of it for the last fifteen years or so, but the road and the bay are older than that. What follows is how I would do it now, in 2026, if you had one day and you wanted to use it well.

Google Maps sometimes misdirects via Wildwood Rd. Stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd. That is the way you find me. If you are coming the other direction, from Dunsborough or Eagle Bay, the same applies on the way home.

Eagle Bay Brewing Co is open daily, eleven through to five. Book a table. They take walk-ins but in summer or on a weekend through autumn, without a phone-ahead, you can stand around looking at the lawn for an hour. That is not the way to start a day.

The site sits on a working farm. You drive up a gravel track lined with paddocks, the building comes into view at the top of the rise, and the first thing you see is the lawn: long, sloping, full of families and dogs and people who look like they have just come off the beach. The garden bar is where most people end up. The restaurant proper is inside, woodfired ovens going, and the head chef Josh De Caen runs a menu that changes with what is around. The pizzas are honest. The salads are not afterthoughts. The seafood is local when it can be.

The beers: there are usually six or seven on tap. I drink the pale ale. My wife drinks the kolsch when it is on. Don't know what you want, ask the staff for a paddle and they will give you four small glasses and let you work it out. That is the right way to start.

The kids' menu and the playground are not a footnote. For small people in tow, this is the easiest lunch in the region. The lawn is fenced from the carpark. The food comes out fast enough that nobody melts down. The staff are unflappable. I have watched four generations of one family at one table on a Sunday, and nobody looked like they were enduring it.

I am not a food writer. But here is what I would do.

• Start with the bread and dip if it is on. They make their own.
• Share a pizza. The seasonal pizza is almost always the one to get. If they have the lamb sausage one, get that.
• Salad with grains, whatever they have on. The chef puts thought into the side menu and most people miss it.
• One mains between two, chargrilled pork or whatever fish is up that day.
• Dessert if you are stopping the day there. Skip it if you are still planning to walk afterwards.

A paddle of beer between two is plenty for a driver. A pint each with a designated driver in the group. The beers are properly bittered and properly hopped. They are not made to be drunk in quantity, they are made to be drunk attentively.

From the gallery on Blythe Rd, the drive is straightforward.

1. 10am

   Gallery on Blythe Rd

   To start with a wander through the workshop and gallery before the day proper, the door is usually open from ten. Forty minutes here is plenty. Pamela will let you take your time.
2. 11am

   Cape Naturaliste lookout

   Twelve minutes from Dunsborough, up to the lighthouse car park, walk to the lookout. Twenty minutes of your time, the whole bay laid out below. In whale season — May through to December — this is also the platform to use.
3. 12:30pm

   Eagle Bay Brewing

   Lunch booked for twelve-thirty. You have time before to walk around the property or take a paddle out to the garden bar. Two hours here is the right amount.
4. 3pm

   Meelup or Eagle Bay beach

   Down off the brewery to the coast. Meelup or Eagle Bay itself, depending on the wind. Hour on the beach, swim if it is warm enough.
5. 5pm

   Back to Yallingup via Dunsborough

   The slow way home — Caves Rd, the back coast — gets you to Yallingup in time to clean up before dinner.

Photo: Stuart Sevastos, CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The thing about this stretch of coast (Eagle Bay, Meelup, Bunker Bay) is that it faces north into Geographe Bay. The water is calmer than ours at Yallingup. The bays are smaller, more sheltered, more swimmable in conditions that would put you off Smiths Beach. Wind up at home, you go round the corner and the wind is gone.

That is the secret of the whole headland. There is a microclimate at work. The southerlies that beat us up in summer come over the top of the cape and lay flat on the other side. Eagle Bay can be glass while Yallingup is whitecapped. If your day is not behaving on the south side, you drive north.

Photo: Calistemon, CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

I take visitors up this way often. Cape Naturaliste first, brewery for lunch, Meelup for the afternoon. People who land in Perth in the morning and drive down can do this circuit on day one without feeling rushed, and they have a sense of the region by the time the sun goes.

The longer version of the lighthouse stop covers the walks, the platform, and the history of the place.

Here is where most day-trippers waste their time. They drive Caves Rd back the way they came. Do not do that. Take the coast road home.

From Eagle Bay, drop down to Meelup Beach Rd. Follow it round through Meelup. Pull over, walk the sand, the karri trees come right down to the water. Then continue south through the forest. The road climbs and falls through the trees, the light comes through the canopy in shafts, you see one or two roos in the late afternoon. It eventually drops you back onto Cape Naturaliste Rd at Dunsborough, and from there you slip back through Yallingup Siding to the coast.

The whole drive home takes about forty minutes if you stop nowhere. An hour if you stop, which you should.

Coming up from Margaret River or Perth for the day, the road home from Eagle Bay sends you right past my gate on Blythe Rd. There is a small flag at the gate when we are open. If you have had a good day and you are not in a hurry, come in. Pamela is usually in the gallery. I am usually in the workshop. We are open until five most days. The light in the gallery after four is the best of the day, which is why we built it that way.

A couple of things, plainly.

• Trying to do two breweries in a day. There are other good ones in the region (Cheeky Monkey, Black Brewing, Rocky Ridge, Cowaramup) but the day stops working when you put two of them in it. Pick one.
• Eagle Bay on a public holiday Monday. It is overrun. Tuesday through Thursday is when the place is most itself. Saturday at lunch is fine if you have booked. Sunday is the busiest day of the week, so book three days out.
• Doing the lighthouse and the brewery and Smiths Beach and Canal Rocks all in one afternoon. You will see none of them. Pick two stops a day and do them properly. The day works.
• Driving back via Wildwood Rd. Google will sometimes try to send you down it. Stay on the proper roads.

If this day reads well to you, the same shape works in a few directions:

• A morning at the a Ngilgi Cave morning, done properly cave instead of the lighthouse, then up to Eagle Bay for lunch.
• The a Dunsborough day from Yallingup proper, a slower town day with less driving.
• Or skip the brewery entirely and do a Dunsborough day that is not about wine, the version of the day that is not about a meal.

Autumn. I keep saying this and it keeps being true. February through May is when the wind drops, the crowds thin out, the brewery is at its best. Full but not packed, the kitchen running properly, the lawn warm into the evening. Summer is for the beach. Winter has its own quiet days but you will want a roof more than a lawn. Autumn is the right time.

Drive past the gallery on your way home. The flag will tell you if I am in.