Things to Do in Busselton

Most people stop at the Jetty and drive on. That's not wrong. The Jetty is extraordinary. But Busselton has more than the Jetty, and the people who figure that out are the ones who come back.

Busselton sits at the head of Geographe Bay, an hour-and-a-half south of Perth and twenty-five minutes north of the workshop on Blythe Rd in Yallingup. For a long time it was the working town for the dairy paddocks and the timber mills inland, the kind of country town that you passed through on the way to somewhere else. In the past twenty years it's quietly become a destination on its own terms. The foreshore has been redeveloped, the food scene has lifted, the breweries have arrived, and the Jetty (rebuilt and renewed) has settled into being one of the best-known structures in Western Australia.

I've been driving up to Busselton for shopping, hardware, and the occasional good meal since the early eighties. Here's what I'd send a friend to.

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

It's nearly two kilometres long. It's the longest timber-piled jetty in the southern hemisphere. It was built between 1865 and 1960 in a series of extensions to handle the timber and wool trade out of Geographe Bay, and it nearly fell to pieces in the 1970s before a long, well-organised local effort saved it.

You can walk the full length, take the little jetty train, or do both. The walk takes about forty minutes one way at a normal pace, ninety minutes return if you stop to look. The train runs every half hour, takes fifteen minutes each way, and is the right choice if you've got kids or sore knees.

At the end of the jetty is the Underwater Observatory. You descend eight metres in a circular chamber with windows on the marine artificial reef that's grown up around the jetty pylons. There are fish you wouldn't expect this far south — Western Australian dhufish, samson fish, blue groper, dozens of smaller species, the occasional turtle. The tour takes about an hour including the train. Book ahead in summer; it sells out by midday most days from December to February.

A practical note. The jetty walk is exposed. There's no shade. In summer, do it early or late. The sun off the water is fierce, the wind from the south can pick up by mid-morning, and the walk back from the observatory feels longer than the walk out. In winter, the rain on the boards is its own thing — bring a real jacket.

A second practical note. The Jetty is free to walk on. The train and the observatory have tickets and you'll want to book online. Do not skip the observatory. It's the thing that makes the Jetty more than a long photo opportunity.

The foreshore beside the Jetty has been transformed over the past fifteen years. It used to be a stretch of grass, a car park, and a couple of takeaways. Now it's a properly designed waterfront with sheltered swimming areas, a playground built for actual kids rather than insurance lawyers, picnic lawns, a skate park, and a coastal walking and cycling path that runs east toward Port Geographe and west toward the Vasse area.

For a family, the foreshore is the obvious base. The swimming is calm — Geographe Bay faces north and the water is sheltered from the southwesterly swell that pounds the Yallingup coast. Toddlers can paddle in chest-deep water without anything pulling them. The playground has shade structures, a flying fox, and water-play features in summer. You can park, set up for a morning, walk to the Jetty, eat lunch on the grass, and not move the car until late afternoon.

The coastal path is worth a separate mention. It runs east from the Jetty for about five kilometres to the Port Geographe canals, mostly along the dune line, with the water on your left the whole way. It's flat. It's pram-friendly. On a calm morning the bay is glass and you can watch dolphins fishing along the shoreline. Allow ninety minutes return at a stroll, two-and-a-half hours with stops.

Photo: (public domain), Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

The food scene has lifted considerably in the past decade. Most weekends you can eat very well in Busselton without driving anywhere else. The shortlist:

The Goose. On the foreshore, fifty metres from the Jetty entrance. Long-standing, all-day, properly good. Breakfast is excellent (the spiced corn fritter has been on the menu for years for good reason). Lunch is sandwiches and salads done well. Dinner is local fish and small plates, often with a southwest wine list at fair prices. The dining room looks out over the bay. Book ahead for sunset tables.

Rocky Ridge Brewing Hub. A few kilometres east of the centre, in a warehouse on the way out toward Capel. Properly serious craft beer (Rocky Ridge is one of the most-respected breweries in WA), a kitchen that does pizza, share plates, and burgers well, and a casual room that fills with families on a Sunday afternoon. The brewery does a constantly rotating range of seasonal beers; ask what's new on tap.

The Berry Farm Cafe. Outside the town centre proper but worth a detour for breakfast or a light lunch. Set in a working berry orchard with views down the valley. Scones with cream and the farm's own jam are the order.

Stilts Restaurant. Newer addition, in the Esplanade Hotel on the foreshore, doing a more ambitious dinner menu with a sea view. Good for a date night or a quieter dinner away from the family-pub atmosphere of the centre.

Coffee: Drift Cafe on the foreshore for a flat white with a Jetty view. Yahava KoffeeWorks in the town centre for serious coffee bean people; their roastery is here.

For groceries and provisions: the Busselton Farmers Market runs every Saturday morning at the foreshore, 7:30am to 11:30am. It's good but smaller than the Margaret River market. Both are worth a visit if you're staying a week.

The town centre is a few blocks back from the foreshore, on Queen Street. It's a working country main street: a few good op shops, a decent independent bookshop, a couple of galleries, an old cinema, the post office, the hospital, and the Vasse Bar (the local for a quiet beer). You can walk the whole centre in twenty minutes.

A few stops worth ten minutes each: ArtGeo Cultural Complex, the old courthouse repurposed as a small regional gallery, with rotating exhibitions and a permanent collection of southwest work. Yahava KoffeeWorks, mentioned above for the coffee, also runs roastery tours if you're a bean nerd. Newtown House, the oldest stone house in the southwest, a few minutes east of the centre — small, free, and worth a visit if you're interested in early settlement history.

The Busselton Hospital mural project, with large-scale public art on the side of the hospital and along Queen Street, is genuinely good. Walk the laneways. There's more public art in Busselton than people realise.

A few stops within fifteen minutes of the centre that I'd add to a full day:

Wonnerup House. A National Trust-listed 1830s homestead a few minutes east of town. Restored, walkable in an hour, and a good window on what the early settler families actually lived in. The garden alone is worth half an hour.

Eagle Bay Brewing Co. Twenty minutes west of Busselton, on the road toward Dunsborough. Long-table dining, wood-fired pizza, paddocks out the window. One of the better casual lunches in the broader region. Eagle Bay Brewing as a day trip is on the journal.

Cape Naturaliste lighthouse. Half an hour west on the cape. The walks from the carpark, the views over Geographe Bay and the Indian Ocean, the whale watching in season. A good morning or afternoon. (For the longer take on the lighthouse and the walks around it.)

Meelup Beach. Twenty-five minutes west, on the Cape Naturaliste side. The most sheltered swimming on the cape. Family-perfect. Park early on a summer Saturday.

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

This is the practical question for most visitors. Both work. The answer depends on what else you're doing.

As a base. Busselton works well as a base if you've got a family, want flat sheltered swimming for the kids, and plan to do a mix of beach days, a few wineries, and one or two big days down at Margaret River. Accommodation is generally better value than Yallingup or Dunsborough, the supermarkets are bigger, and the foreshore is a place to come back to at the end of every day. Where to actually stay covers the hotels and caravan parks. Cape Naturaliste and the Yallingup coast are twenty-five to thirty minutes away. Margaret River township is fifty minutes. The wineries between Cowaramup and Wilyabrup are forty to forty-five.

As a day trip. From Yallingup, Busselton is twenty-five minutes north. A morning at the Jetty, lunch at The Goose or Rocky Ridge, an afternoon walking the foreshore, and you're back at Yallingup for sunset. Easy and worthwhile.

If you're trying to choose, my honest preference is to base yourself at Yallingup or Dunsborough (more coast, more bush, more art, more wine) and use Busselton as a day trip. But for families with under-tens who want flat water for the kids and a town with full supermarkets and a hospital nearby, Busselton is the better base.

For a one-day trip, this is how I'd shape it.

1. 8:00am

   The Jetty

   Walk out early before the sun hardens. Full length to the Underwater Observatory. Take the train back if you've already booked the observatory tour.
2. 10:00am

   Drift Cafe

   Coffee on the foreshore. Sit a while.
3. 11:00am

   Foreshore swim and playground

   Swim if it's warm, walk the coastal path if it's not. An hour-and-a-half.
4. 12:30pm

   The Goose

   Lunch on the deck. Local fish or the corn fritter.
5. 2:30pm

   ArtGeo Cultural Complex

   Forty minutes in the gallery. Walk the laneways for the public art.
6. 3:30pm

   Rocky Ridge Brewing Hub

   An afternoon pint, share plates if you're still hungry.
7. 5:30pm

   Sunset at the foreshore

   Walk back to the Jetty. The sun sets through the pylons in summer.

That's a full day. If you're not staying in Busselton, drive home south to Yallingup or Dunsborough by 7pm.

For a weekend, add a half-day at Cape Naturaliste and Meelup Beach, an evening at Eagle Bay Brewing, and a morning at Wonnerup House.

Busselton is the best family base in the broader region. The Jetty train is a hit with kids. The Underwater Observatory is genuinely interesting for ages five and up. The foreshore playground is one of the best in WA. The water is calm enough for toddlers. There are public toilets, change rooms, and shade. The Goose welcomes prams. The Saturday market has good kid-suitable food.

A kid-shaped day: Jetty train at 9am, Underwater Observatory at 10am, playground from 11am, lunch on the grass at noon, swim from 1pm, ice cream at 3pm, foreshore walk at 4pm, home for an early dinner. Pram-friendly throughout.

A few honest notes. Said with respect.

Busselton is not Yallingup. It does not have the surf, the granite headlands, or the bush. The light at sunset off the Geographe Bay water is different from the light off the Indian Ocean cliffs. Some visitors arrive expecting the dramatic coast of the cape and are disappointed when they find a flat sheltered bay. The flat sheltered bay is the point — but if it's not what you wanted, the dramatic coast is twenty-five minutes west.

Busselton is not a wine town. There are a few cellar doors in the immediate area but the famous wineries are forty-plus minutes south, around Cowaramup, Wilyabrup, and Yallingup. If you're here for wine, plan to drive.

Busselton is not the place for surfers. Geographe Bay has no swell. The surf is at Yallingup, Smiths, and Surfers Point at Prevelly — all at least twenty minutes west and south. Surfers Point is fifty minutes from Busselton centre.

What Busselton is, is the most accessible part of the broader Margaret River region. Calm water, flat ground, good food, the Jetty, and proximity to the rest of it. Use that for what it's worth.

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

If you're driving south from Perth (which most visitors are), Busselton is the natural first stop. The drive from Perth is about two-and-a-half to three hours, mostly down the Forrest Highway. Stop in Busselton for lunch on the foreshore, walk the Jetty, drink a coffee, then push on south to Yallingup or Margaret River for the rest of the trip. That's the pattern most weekenders follow, and it's a good one.

The drive from Busselton centre to the workshop on Blythe Rd in Yallingup is twenty-five minutes. Stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd. (For a longer look at the route between the two.)

The workshop sits twenty-five minutes south of the centre of Busselton, on Blythe Rd off Bussell Hwy. Open every day, ten to four (ten to five on Saturdays). Stop in on the way back from a Jetty morning and the timing works out.

Busselton is the easy part of the region. Calm water, flat ground, a great jetty, good food, a foreshore that's been thought through. It's the right place to start a southwest trip and the right place to spend a day with kids. It's not where you'd come for surf, for serious bush, for the cellar door experience, or for the dramatic coast. For those, drive south and west.

But if I had a day with grandchildren and a clear morning, I'd come up to Busselton, walk the Jetty, eat at The Goose, swim at the foreshore, and drive home at sunset. That's the right way to use it.

That's Busselton. Used well, it makes the rest of the region work better.

Photo: Sam Wilson, CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons