Margaret River, Western Australia

I do quite a few short trips within Australia and thought I might start putting some of them on here as someone may find them useful one day!

A few months back I spent a few weeks in Western Australia, visiting Fremantle, Margaret River and Esperance.

Margaret River is a beautiful little town located south of WA's capital, Perth, which is quite popular with adult/couple holidaymakers who are looking for some indulging and relaxation. The area is the Margaret River wine region, with hundreds of wineries and a number of gourmet food attractions which make for a great foodie/wino trip. The region is also located on a beautiful coastline which is popular with surfers, and is the home of many festivals and events. The town of Margaret River itself is a bit of a hippy dippy surfy town which makes it super laid back and relaxing, with a large range of the eco and organic.

We spent a few nights in the area, and stayed at the lovely Redgate Beach Escape - a self contained 2 bedroom chalet overlooking the Redgate beach. www.redgatebeachescape.com.au 

dining + lounge + view of the chalet. 

the two bedrooms were on either side of this with the same view.

 Redgate Beach Escape outside deck

 Redgate Beach

  Redgate Beach

 Redgate Beach

The chalet was a few km's from the town centre, but if you were visiting the Margaret River region you would definitely need to hire a car anyway to easily get down there, drive around the sights, wineries and beaches at your own pace. When in Margaret River most of your time will be spent going to wineries, gourmet food outlets or attractions so I don't see a need to be in the town centre, most of the gorgeous boutique accommodation on offer is located away from the town.

The first night in MR we went into town for dinner, we were a little confused as most of the wineries have amazing restaurants, but most of these do not open all nights, if any, for dinner. Recommended restaurants in the town are MUST wine bar and bistro or Waves Seafood Grill, Cape Lodge is open for dinner a few minutes out of town and some wineries serve dinner on weekends, definitely worth checking what days and booking a table as this changes seasonally.

However, if you don't fancy going to any of these places for dinner I would highly recommend simply buying gourmet local food that is on offer either directly from the source (there are a number of olive farms, the berry farm, margaret river dairy co, etc), Margaret River Providore or from the Larder on the main street which stocks gourmet local food, open a few bottles of local wine and have a delicious cheese & wine dinner in your accommodation while the sun sets like we did.

local margaret river region bread, olive oil, cheese, olives, cured meats and dukkah from the Larder, 

voyager estate shiraz and a couple of not so local smallgoods like maggie beer pate which i am obsessed with

sunset view from Redgate Beach Escape - glorious

But Margaret River is famous for being a food and wine region so surely there must be some amazing meals to be had - yes? You will be relieved to know that there is a huge choice of places to eat, however they usually are only open in the am, not so much the pm. Most wineries have restaurants as well as their cellar door and you will be spoilt for choice with lunch options - as 12 - 3pm is when all the eating seems to happen in Margaret River.

We chose to have our extravagant three course lunch at Voyager Estate. An absolutely stunning winery, one of the staff told us the owner was a rich mining magnate that didn't drink alcohol and only drank the grape juice that Voyager made. Despite this Voyager produce some beautiful wines, we purchased a case after agreeing that we preferred their wine selection over a few other wineries we visited.

Voyager Estate

Gorgeous dining room

Voyager Estate charcuterie plate

During the course of our cellar door tour, we stopped by Leeuwin Estate which we were quite disappointed in. The wine seemed quite overpriced and not to my taste but the property itself was quite beautiful. We also visited Vasse Felix which I was really looking forward to, but the wine didn't live up to my expectations. A nice surprise was a visit to Cape Mentelle which certainly didn't have an impressive set up like Leeuwin, Vasse Felix and Voyager with their beautiful cellar doors, but instead had a selection of wine on offer that ended up being the best from the trip. We ordered a case and have a hard time not drinking all the bottles at once! Our favourite bottles that we purchased from the trip were the Cape Mentelle 2008 Shiraz, Cape Mentelle 2008 Cab Merlot Trinders, Voyager Estate 2008 Shiraz and the Voyager Estate 2008 Girt by Sea Cab Merlot. Mmm lovely!

Leeuwin Estate Winery

Vasse Felix Winery

Besides the wine and gourmet food, there are of course the surrounding beaches. On our way back up to the city we stopped by a number of beaches for a swim, and all were beautiful.

Injidup Beach

Injidup Beach

Yallingup Beach

Bunker Bay

Bunker Bay creature

All in all we had a great time on our short two night trip to Margaret River. It is definitely a region which deserves a week to explore, there were so many other things we wanted to see but were unable to cram into our short time. We crammed three beaches into our drive back up to the city, but it would be lovely to spend a couple of hours at each one - not to mention the countless other beaches in the area. We only managed to visit four wineries in one day, there were so many more we would have liked to visit - Cullen Estate, Evans & Tate, Saracen Estate and the breweries - Duckstein brewery, Bootleg brewery, Colonial and Cowaramup brewing. All this and I haven't even mentioned all the caves that you can visit in the area and the chocolate & fudge factories....