In order to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary, we decided to do a romantic short trip to the Southwest of Western Australia. We spent our holiday in a cute little hotel in the wine region of Margart River for four days and three nights.

We departed on a Monday, it was warm and spring-like for the very first time this year. We drove to the Yallingup Lodge, a small spa hotel, located 4 km away from Dunsborough.

In principle Dunsborough is less than 300 km away from Perth. But because there are no “autobahns”, only highways in Western Australia, where you’re sometimes allowed to drive 110 km/h, we needed about 4.5 hours to get there. Most of the drivers don’t drive faster than the speed limit. This may be because on the previous Sunday the birthday of the Queen was celebrated. Due to Australia’s public holiday regulations, Monday was also off and the police charged the doubled amount of merit points of the driving license for speeding.

Therefore we were also good guys and we didn’t drive faster than the speed limit on one of the two existing highways heading South. Our car has a speed control which is really recommendable to have on these very straight roads in Western Australia. Up to Bunbury the highway is well maintained. That means that there are two lanes in each direction, often with bush and trees in between the two directions. It therefore feels like an autobahn, but it isn’t one.

In order to grasp the dimensions of Australia, there are not many towns or villages in Western Australia to begin with. Although the Southwest is rather dense populated compared to other regions of the state. I can name all the bigger towns in the region, although bigger is relative. For example is Bunbury the second biggest city after Perth in Western Australia, but the town feels like a rather small Austrian country town. Most of the time there are only forrests and vineyards and nothing else between the villages, and they all located on one major road. The landscape is therefore very beautiful and full of nature.

Dunsborough itself is very small village with about 4000 inhabitants. The center of the village is built around a roundabout, surrounded by many souvenir shops. They have one pub, a few banks without ATMs and a huge super market.

The next village after Dunsborough is called Yallingup. It has just one road into the village and this is a dead end road. Yallingup is in the middle of the Leeuwin-Naturaliste national park. The beach and the shore is breathtakingly beautiful!

Here you can have a look at the map of the Southwest of Western Australia and and a bit bigger map of the Margaret River wine region.

Our short trip to the Southwest of Western Australia is described in 6 articles:

1. » Short trip to the Southwest of Western Australia
2. Yallingup Lodge - our romantic hideaway hotel
3. Wineries in the Margaret River region
4. Beer from the wine region of Margaret River
5. Ngilgi Cave tour
6. Music in the local pub of Dunsborough