Margaret River Chocolate Company: Worth It? (And 6 More Stops Within 20 Minutes)

I'll be honest. I don't go to the Chocolate Factory. But I can tell you exactly where to go for the next four hours after you do.

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

Visitors ask me about the Chocolate Company more than almost anything else. They've seen it on a list somewhere, they're driving in from Perth, and they want to know if it's worth it. My answer is the same every time: sure, go if you've got kids, or if you like chocolate, or if you just want a free sample and a stretch of the legs after the drive. It's free to walk in, parking's easy, and they make the chocolate on-site so you can watch it through the window. Half an hour, tops.

The real value of the Chocolate Factory is that it sits in the middle of some of the best country in the South West. Metricup is dead centre between Margaret River and Dunsborough, which means almost everything worth doing is fifteen or twenty minutes away. If you're already there, you've done the hard work. Here's the loop.

The Chocolate Company is on Harman's South Road in Metricup. Not Swan Valley. There's a Chocolate Company up there too, different operation. Yours is the one near the vineyards.

From the carpark, take a moment. Look at a map. You're surrounded by a triangle: Margaret River town to the south, Dunsborough to the north, and the coast (and my workshop) to the west. The loop I'm about to describe runs you clockwise around that triangle and lands you back at Smiths Beach by late afternoon, which is the only correct place to end any day in this region.

Google Maps sometimes misdirects via Wildwood Rd when people are trying to find me afterwards. Stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd. Save yourself the detour.

Get back in the car. Go straight to Vasse Felix.

It's three minutes from the Chocolate Factory. Tom Cullity planted the first vines in this region there in 1967. They were the first commercial winery in Margaret River, and the place has the relaxed authority of somewhere that doesn't have to try.

The cellar door is good. The art collection upstairs is better than most regional galleries. And if you're hungry, the restaurant is one of the best lunches in the region: modern, careful, not pretentious. You can book lunch at Vasse Felix and stay for a couple of hours, or just do a tasting and move on.

I'll say this: good design and good wine come from the same place. Patience, materials, knowing when to leave something alone. I've thought that since I came here and Vasse Felix is part of why.

where I send people for cellar doors

If it's a Saturday morning, drop everything and drive down to the Margaret River Farmers Market Saturday morning at the Education Campus. Eight till twelve. That's it.

It's where I do my shopping. Olives from the Olio Bello stall. Sourdough from one of the bakers. Whatever's good with the vegetables that week. There's coffee, there's a butcher with proper free-range pork, there's a flower stand. Half of Yallingup is there by nine. It's not put on for tourists. It's the actual market.

If it's not Saturday, skip this stop. Don't worry about it.

Heading back north toward Yallingup, you'll pass Wills Domain. Smaller than Vasse Felix, family-run, and the restaurant looks out over the vines. If you didn't eat at Vasse Felix, eat here. If you did, do a tasting and move on. Their chenin blanc is the kind of wine that makes you reconsider whether you actually understood what chenin was supposed to taste like.

This is a fork. Weather decides.

Hot or raining? Go to Ngilgi Cave. It's a working show cave with a self-guided option that takes about forty-five minutes. The Wardandi name and the Wardandi story are part of it. Listen for them. Underground is sixteen degrees year-round and unaffected by weather. The formations are genuinely something.

a Ngilgi Cave morning, done properly

If the weather's fine and the wind's not howling, skip the cave and drive ten minutes further to Canal Rocks.

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

Canal Rocks is granite. Big slabs of it, with channels cut through by the swell. There's a footbridge across the main channel. Stand in the middle of that bridge and look at the water moving under you. That's a feeling I haven't found anywhere else. Twenty minutes there is enough.

You'll be coming back through Yallingup Siding. Blythe Rd runs off Caves Rd, and the gallery's signed from there. The flag's out front when we're open. Come in. The walls are jarrah and southwest limestone — I built them in 1988. Pamela curates the space and you can watch through the workshop window if I'm in there making something. No pressure to buy. Most people just look. That's fine.

I put this here because it's on the route. Driving past anyway, drop in. Otherwise, that's fine. The reason I mention it is that the chocolate-factory loop tends to skip the makers, and the makers are half of what makes this region what it is.

the eating itinerary

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

With light left, drive twelve minutes to Yallingup Beach itself. The break here is famous in surfing circles. It's where I learned. The beach is small, the headland frames it, and the late light off the water still hasn't got boring.

You don't need to do anything here. Just walk along the sand for ten minutes.

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

Smiths Beach is where I go. Five minutes south of Yallingup, signed from Caves Road, easy to find.

After a long day, this is where you land. The beach faces west. The water is clean. You can swim if it's warm, walk if it's not, sit on the dune and watch the light do its thing. The carpark has a cafe attached for a coffee or a beer at the end of the loop.

That's the seven stops. Chocolate, wine, market (if it's Saturday), wine again, cave or rocks, gallery, beach. Total drive time: about an hour and twenty across the whole loop. Total time you should actually spend on it: half a day if you're sensible, a full day if you take lunch properly.

I said I don't go. Let me clarify.

I don't go because I make furniture, not because I have anything against chocolate. The Chocolate Company is fine. The kids love it, the samples are free, and the people who run it are friendly. With young children in the car, it'll buy you forty minutes of peace before they start asking what's next.

What it isn't, by itself, is a destination. The reason to drive to Metricup is everything that's within fifteen minutes of Metricup. Treat the Chocolate Factory as your starting point and the day opens up.

Autumn is the best time to do this loop. The crowds thin, the wineries are quieter, and the light through April and May does something to the vines that the summer light doesn't. Pick a Saturday in April with the farmers market in full swing if you can.

Otherwise, any day works. The country doesn't change. The order does.