Margaret River Summer: How to Avoid the Crowds

I have lived in Yallingup since 1982, and I can tell you the region in January is a different animal to the rest of the year. The light is harder, the carparks are full by ten, and the people who usually have Smiths Beach to themselves on a Tuesday in May are sharing it with half of Perth. None of that is a complaint. It just means you need a plan.

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

What follows is what I would tell my own family if they were coming down between Christmas and the end of school holidays. Not a brochure. Just the rhythm I have worked out over forty summers.

If you do nothing else, do this: be at the beach by eight, off it by eleven, and back in the water after four. The middle of the day in January here is unforgiving. The sun is high, the sand is hot, and that is also when every carpark from Bunker Bay to Prevelly fills up. Locals are nowhere to be seen between eleven and three. We are in the shade, in the workshop, eating lunch, or reading a book.

Live by that one rule and the crowds basically stop existing.

The middle of the day in January here is unforgiving. Locals are nowhere to be seen between eleven and three.

Smiths Beach is busy in summer. There is no way around that. It is one of the best beaches in Australia and the secret got out a long time ago. The carpark fills early. If Smiths is full, do not sit in the queue. Just keep moving.

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

Yallingup Beach itself stays quieter than Smiths in summer. It does not have the same hero status with out-of-towners, and the swimming is reef-protected, so families who want guaranteed waves often go elsewhere. Park down at the bottom near the boat ramp.

Injidup Beach further south is harder to reach and that does most of the filtering for you. The track in is rough, and you need decent shoes to walk from the carpark to the natural spa. Worth it. The northern end is where you want to be on a still morning.

Eagle Bay, early. Drive over before breakfast. The water in Geographe Bay is almost flat compared to the back beaches, and at seven in the morning you will share the place with half a dozen people walking dogs. By ten it is a different scene. my beach rankings for the area

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

Meelup, off-peak. Meelup is gorgeous and everybody knows it, so the secret is to time it. Mid-morning is the worst. Try sunset on a weekday. The day-trippers have driven home and the families have packed up.

Photo: Western Australian Government, CC BY 2.5 AU · via Wikimedia Commons

Honestly, the crowds are not the real problem in January. The parking is. Smiths Beach Resort have their own area which is private. The public carpark down the hill is small and turns into a slow-moving queue by mid-morning. Same for Yallingup main carpark on a hot weekend.

A few things that work:

• Walk in. Staying in Yallingup village? Just walk down. It is fifteen minutes and you will not lose half your day looking for a park.
• Use the back beaches. Quindalup and Bunker Bay have more parking than Smiths and Yallingup combined.
• Avoid Boxing Day and the four days after New Year. That is the absolute peak. Even locals stay home.

Between two and four in the afternoon in January, you have three options and they are all good ones. You can be in the water somewhere that is not a famous beach. You can be eating lunch somewhere with a fan. Or you can be indoors looking at something.

This is the time of day the workshop does its best work. Solid jarrah walls, southwest limestone, and a workshop that stays cool when the outside is in the mid-thirties. I built it in 1988 the same way I build furniture: slowly, properly, with materials that hold their own against the climate. The afternoon light through the front comes in at a low angle and does something to the timber that you cannot really photograph.

If you are in Yallingup and the carparks are full, come and find me. The gallery is on Blythe Rd, open most afternoons, and the building itself stays cool when everything else is baking. Pamela curates the space and will talk you through what we have on. Google Maps sometimes misdirects via Wildwood Rd — stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd.

The cellar doors that take walk-ins are full at lunch. For a tasting in summer without queueing, go before noon or after three. Vasse Felix and Leeuwin Estate get the busiest. The smaller cellar doors (Clairault Streicker, Cape Grace, Watershed) generally have more room. Book ahead. In January, do not assume.

The other thing about wineries in summer is the wind. By two in the afternoon a sea breeze comes through that flattens the heat and makes the cellar door verandahs the best seat in the house. That is the moment.

There are a lot of things to do down here that do not cost anything, and most of them are also not where the tour buses go. free things to do in Margaret River

• The Cape to Cape Track, any section between Yallingup and Sugarloaf. Even on a January weekend, twenty minutes into the bush and you will not see another person.
• Canal Rocks at first light. The carpark is dead empty at six. By nine, full.
• Ngilgi Cave is busy at peak times but they manage it well. Book a slot.

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

Choosing when to come down in summer? Here is the order I would rank the weeks:

1. Mid-to-late February. Schools are back, the heat is still on, and the place exhales. My favourite.
2. The first two weeks of December. Before the Christmas wave hits.
3. The second half of January. Pre-school-going-back. Busy but manageable.
4. Christmas to New Year. Beautiful but absolutely packed. Plan around it.
5. The first week of January. Avoid if you can.

Autumn is a different story altogether (that is when I have the place back to myself) but if summer is the window you have, those are the calls. the spots I send people who want quiet

That is most of it. The region is generous in summer if you do not fight it. Get up early, stay out of the middle of the day, and you will have a better time than the people sitting in the Smiths Beach queue at eleven thirty wondering where they went wrong.

I will probably be in the workshop. Come and say hello if you want a break from the sun.