Margaret River on a Budget: 12 Free or Cheap Things to Do

The best things in this region are free. The beaches, the walks, the rock pools, the light.

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

I've watched a lot of visitors arrive in this region thinking they need to spend a fortune to enjoy it. Cellar doors, restaurants, tours, accommodation. It can add up fast. But I can tell you the best things I do on weekends don't cost anything. I surf. I walk. I sit on the beach with Pamela. I drink coffee on my own verandah.

Travelling on a budget, or already spent it on the cellar doors, here are twelve things I'd put in front of any visitor. All free, or close to it.

Free parking, free beach, free swim. Smiths is my favourite beach in the region and I'm not the only one. The surfers know it, the families know it, the locals know it. Get there early in summer because the carpark fills up by 10am. In autumn and winter you'll often have it half to yourself.

the Smiths Beach write-up for the long version of why I rate it.

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

135 km from Cape Naturaliste to Cape Leeuwin and you don't need a permit, a booking, or a dollar to walk any of it. You can do an hour, a day, or the whole eight days. I do small sections all the time. The Sugarloaf Rock to Yallingup stretch is forty minutes one way and you'll get the cliffs, the wildflowers, and views that change every hundred metres.

day walks off the Cape to Cape for which sections to pick.

The village beach. Parking is free, there's a grassed area, public toilets, and a small surf reef at the southern end that's been training local surfers for generations. New to the region, this is the easiest beach to find and one of the prettiest. Bring sandwiches and don't leave.

You'd pay good money for this if it had a fence around it. Granite rocks at the south end of Injidup Beach form a series of natural pools where the swell rushes in and turns the water into a spa. Free, but you have to time it right. Big swell = dangerous. Small swell = magic. Check the conditions before you go.

how to find the Injidup spa for the timing and the access track.

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

Granite outcrops south of Yallingup with a footbridge running across the gap. The water rushes through, the wind comes off the ocean, and the colour of the granite changes through the day. A fifteen-minute stop or a half-day one depending on whether you brought lunch. Carpark is free.

Just up from Canal Rocks. A big sea stack pushed out from the cliff, with seabirds nesting and surf breaking around it. There's a small carpark, a lookout, and a stairway down to the rocks if you want to scramble. At sunset it's hard to beat. Costs nothing.

You can pay to go inside the lighthouse and it's worth it if that's your thing. But the walks around it are free, short, flat, with views over Geographe Bay and the Indian Ocean. Between September and November you can often spot migrating humpbacks from the lookout. Wear a hat. The wind up there has opinions.

Sheltered, calm, north-facing, with peppermint trees right down to the sand. Free parking, free swim, and the easiest swimmable water within an hour of my workshop. Castle Bay and Point Picquet are along the same road if Meelup is busy.

Saturday mornings, 8am to noon, in the centre of Margaret River. Entry is free. You don't have to buy anything to enjoy walking through it, but you will. Local cheese, sourdough, vegetables, fruit, coffee. I've been going on and off for years. It's the best place to get a feel for what's actually grown around here.

Saturday morning at the farmers market is the closest thing the region has to a town square.

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

I'm slightly biased here, but the galleries in the region are all free to walk into. Mine on Blythe Rd, the studios scattered through Margaret River and Cowaramup, the larger venues like the Margaret River Region Open Studios event in spring. You don't have to buy anything. Most makers will happily talk to you about what they're doing.

My gallery in Yallingup has free entry and the workshop is open behind a viewing window so you can watch what's being made. Pamela usually has a kettle on. Three minutes from the Carbunup store on Blythe Rd.

Where the Margaret River meets the Indian Ocean at Prevelly. Free parking, a wide beach, and the river itself for kids to swim in when the ocean is too rough. The Surfers' Point lookout is a few minutes north and it's where the big surf competition happens every autumn. On a quiet day it's just you and the gulls.

Boranup Karri Forest, south of Margaret River off Caves Road. Tall trees, dappled light, a few short walking tracks, no entry fee. Drive through with the windows down. It's the best way to remind yourself that this region isn't just coastline. There's a whole other landscape ten minutes inland and it costs nothing to see it.

A few things that cost a bit but punch above their price.

• A site at a regional caravan park. The cheapest beach accommodation in WA. Cabins, powered sites, and the morning at the beach before anyone else arrives.
• The Margaret River Chocolate Company. Free tastings, you only pay if you buy. a Chocolate Company stop, with company for the visit.
• Vasse Felix tastings. Small fee, but the gallery upstairs is free and worth a look on its own.
• Ngilgi Cave in Yallingup. Paid entry, but cheap by tourist attraction standards and the cave itself is one of a kind.
• Eagle Bay Brewing. You'll pay for the beer but the garden is free to sit in and they do a good cheap lunch.

Three days and very little money. Here's how I'd run it.

Day 1: Smiths Beach in the morning, lunch you brought with you, Cape to Cape walk from Sugarloaf in the afternoon, sunset at Sugarloaf Rock.

Day 2: Margaret River Farmers Market (Saturday) for breakfast and shopping, Boranup Forest drive, then the river mouth at Prevelly.

Day 3: Cape Naturaliste walks, Meelup Beach swim, gallery loop through Yallingup including mine.

That's a week's worth of memory for the price of fuel and a few coffees.

the quieter corners of Yallingup for the local-knowledge version of this list.

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

The thing I've learned in forty years here is that the region rewards slowness, not spending. Walk further, sit longer, talk to whoever's standing next to you at the lookout. That's the trip.