Visiting Ngilgi Cave? Here's the Perfect Yallingup Half-Day

Most people do Ngilgi Cave and drive straight back to Dunsborough. I understand it. The cave takes two hours, you're tired, you think you've done Yallingup. You haven't. You've barely started.

Photo: SeanMack, CC BY 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

I've lived about ten minutes from Ngilgi since 1982. The cave's been here a great deal longer than that. It's the first show cave that opened in Western Australia, back in 1900, and the local Wadandi people knew it long before any of that. There's a story they tell about Ngilgi, the good spirit, driving out Wolgine, the evil one. Take the tour, ask about it. The guides know.

This isn't a post about the cave itself. You can book your Ngilgi Cave tour directly with the Capes Foundation, and they'll tell you everything you need to know about stalactites, helictites, and the bit where they turn the lights off so you can feel what underground actually means. This is a post about what to do with the rest of the day, because having driven down from Perth to see a cave, you owe yourself the country it sits in.

Google Maps sometimes misdirects via Wildwood Rd. Stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd. That's the road my workshop is on, and it's also the easiest line from Ngilgi to everything I'm about to describe. From Dunsborough, the cave's about a fifteen-minute drive. Coming up from Margaret River, give yourself forty.

The first thing to do after a cave is stand somewhere with a horizon. Your eyes need it. Drive five minutes down toward the coast and you're at Yallingup Beach.

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

By mid-morning the light on Yallingup Beach is doing the thing it does best: that pale, sideways light that makes the reef look like it's drawn in pencil. The surfers will be out on the point. The wind hasn't come up yet. You don't need to swim. Just walk down to the sand, look at it for ten minutes, and let the cave leave your body.

The Yallingup Beach guide covers the rest of what's there: the reef walk, the rock pools, where to park to avoid climbing the dune.

By the time you've done the cave and the beach, it's somewhere around 11:30. This is the hour I'd give to the gallery, but I'm biased.

About twelve minutes from the cave mouth. That's how close we are. Turn left at the Carbunup store onto Blythe Rd, follow it down past the vines, and there's a sign on the right with my name on it. Pamela runs the front of the gallery, I'm usually in the workshop through the viewing window. Come in. There's no pressure. To see what jarrah looks like up close — the actual grain of it, not a photograph — this is the room.

The gallery is built from the same jarrah I work with and the same southwest limestone the cave is carved out of. I built the walls myself in 1988. It wasn't a design decision; I only knew one way to build things. Inside there's my work, and the work of the other makers I share the space with: Alan Fox's glass, Julia Carter's paintings, Dylan Fox's photographs. Half an hour, easy.

You've got options, and they depend on what kind of lunch you're after.

For a proper sit-down winery lunch, Vasse Felix is twelve minutes down Caves Road. The kitchen is genuinely good. I'm not in the business of recommending restaurants, but the few I do recommend, I mean. The longer take on Vasse Felix and the other cellar doors close by sets out the rest.

Wanting something quicker, Yallingup Woodfired Bread at Yallingup Siding is a twelve-minute drive and does pizza, coffee, and pastries that make a perfectly good day on their own. The Caves House Hotel dining room is the historic option. It's been feeding visitors since 1903, which I'd put about as close to "since Ngilgi opened" as you can get without splitting hairs.

Here's where the day forks. The choice is between coast and coast. Both are right.

Smiths Beach is where I go. That's all there is to it. There's a reason I've stayed four decades on Blythe Rd. Some mornings you walk down there and the light on the water is something a piece of timber can only aspire to. It's twelve minutes from the workshop. Park at the top, take the path down. With small swell, swim. Otherwise walk the headland north and look back at the bay. That's the photo.

When the southerly is in and Smiths is being chopped about, drive ten minutes further north to Canal Rocks. The granite channels there hold the swell better. You can stand on the bridge over the channels and watch the Indian Ocean push through. The full take on the sunset there is its own piece, but for a half-day, an hour at Canal Rocks in late afternoon is plenty.

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

With walking shoes and an hour, the Cape to Cape track threads both of these places together. The stretch from Smiths to Canal Rocks is a good honest hour each way and it shows you the coast the way it should be seen: slowly, on foot, with the sound of the ocean filling everything up.

Here's how I'd lay it out, plain and simple.

1. 9:00 am

   Ngilgi Cave

   Book the first tour of the day. The cave is quieter, the guides are fresher, and you get out by 11.
2. 11:00 am

   Yallingup Beach

   Twenty minutes on the sand. Don't rush this part.
3. 11:30 am

   John Streater Gallery, Blythe Rd

   Half an hour in the gallery and the workshop viewing window. About twelve minutes from the cave.
4. 12:30 pm

   Lunch

   Vasse Felix if you want long. Yallingup Woodfired if you want quick.
5. 2:30 pm

   Smiths Beach or Canal Rocks

   An hour or two on the coast. Whichever way the wind's blowing.
6. 5:00 pm

   Canal Rocks sunset

   Still got fuel in you? Stay until the light goes. Worth every minute.

Honestly? Don't try to fit the Chocolate Company into this day. It's twenty minutes east in Metricup, and it pulls you out of the loop. To see it, give it its own afternoon.

Don't try to add a second cave either. Ngilgi takes two hours and a bit of focus, and to do more underground after that, the caves compared before you book. They're not all the same, and the drive to Mammoth or Lake will take what's left of your afternoon.

During the WA school holidays (January, April, July, late September) book your cave tour ahead. Don't roll up. They get full. Same goes for Easter and Christmas week. Outside those times, you can usually walk in and pick up the next tour, but I wouldn't bet a whole drive on it.

For everything else (the wineries, the food trails, the longer itineraries) the Margaret River Region visitor guide is the one I send people to. They keep it current, which I don't.

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

Do the cave properly and stop here, and you'll leave Yallingup tired in the good way. That's the difference between a day trip and a day. The cave is the doorway, not the room.

Come and find the gallery while you're working it out. The flag's usually flying.

Read next: the local guide to Yallingup Beach · Canal Rocks at sunset.