The hardest part about a Western Australia Road Trip is deciding where you’re going to go. Are you heading south for the beaches, forests and wine country? Are you headed North for the red dirt and reefs? Or maybe sticking around Perth for some slow city living and coffee culture?

For this particular trip, we packed in a lot. Our sleep itinerary was this:

• 1st night – Perth
• 2nd night – Esperance
• 3rd night – Esperance 
• 4th night – Esperance
• 5th night – Denmark
• 6th night – Denmark
• 7th night – Margaret River
• 8th night – Perth 
• 9th night – Perth

So this tells us for that day, where we’re going to sleep. It’s a rough outline that we tend to edit a lot until we’ve finished adding in all of our activities.

The Travel Days

From the schedule above, you can see that our travel days are: 1, 2, 5, 7 8 and 9. That’s a lot of days and a lot of ground we’re covering. We were a little worried that we were going to spend more than half our time just driving around and not really getting to do anything.

It became my mission to ensure we did something everyday – even when we had to drive for 8 hours. This did mean some early starts to the day, but as we were all on Sydney time, we were waking up at 5am anyway so this worked out surprisingly well for this trip.

Our travel stops were all pre-planned and did take some research. If you have some set places that you want to do whilst doing this route – then have a look at our suggestions.

Sydney to Perth – Little Creatures Brewery Tour

Our flight from Sydney landed around midday on Saturday. We knew we didn’t have heaps of time in Perth, so we did one thing we knew for absolute sure we wanted to do. Little Creatures beer is a firm favourite in our household, so given that they had a brewery tour at 3pm, we thought that was the perfect way to spend the remainder of our travel day.

The brewery itself has a few sites, the tour is located in Fremantle (or Freo as the locals call it). You get an approximately hour long tour of the brewery and finish up in the Brewhouse which is essentially a smaller bar / tasting area. The tour included a lot of tasting samples too – we tried everything that they had on tap and there was more than enough for everyone.

The site also has a restaurant and some cool merch so be sure to check it out.

Perth to Esperance – Wave Rock

The drive from Perth to Esperance is around 8 hours – a long old day. A lot of the route, you travel through amazing National Parks and as soon as you’re out of Perth, it’s a pretty quiet road. 

We had arrived in Perth the day before, so we knew this was going to be a long travel day. I’m not sure where I had heard about Wave Rock but I knew as soon as I saw it that I wanted this to be our pit stop activity for the day. 

I had originally thought this was a First Nations sacred site (like Uluru or Kata Tjuta) but in actual fact, this was a quarry site. The rock was unearthed by diggers and was regaled for it’s wave-like formation. Due to its location, it’s not a very busy site but there were still a few other tourists taking photos. 

You can also walk up to the top of the rock – as usual for Australia, there are some really odd rock formations (in addition to the wave) that are definitely worth a look.

We also stopped here for lunch – we went back on ourselves and went to the Bush Bakehouse in Hyden. If you haven’t brought lunch with you, you should definitely go to this bakery. They have your classic Australian meat pies but they also have Gluten free, veggie, and vegan options. They also had the best chocolate eclair I’ve had in Australia. 

Esperance to Denmark – Porongurups National Park

This was my favourite hike of the trip. From Esperance to Porongurup National Park it took approximately 5 hours but was a smooth easy ride with not a lot of traffic. 

My full review of this hike is here.

The hike we chose was the Castle Rock to Granite Skywalk hike. It took approximately 2 hours from top to bottom but we did spend a fair amount of time on top of the huge granite rock which had a steel walkway constructed into it. The climb is a scramble so it may not be for everyone but the view (and the thrill) is definitely what was appealing to me. 

Although we’re unlikely to be in this neck of the woods for a while, I would definitely recommend this as a great stop off before driving the final hour to Denmark. 

Denmark to Margaret River – Half Day Wine tour at Margaret River

OK so this stop wasn’t really on the way to our destination. Here, we knew we only had a half day in Margaret River before driving back to Perth. And if you’re in wine country, you’ve got to get on a tour. 

For our tour, we visited Xanadu, Voyager and McHenry Hohnen vineyards.

This particular tour could also be a full day tour. The driver came and picked us up at lunch time (we just about made it to our hotel in time for the pick up) and then brought us to the rest of the group who had been to an additional three vineyards that morning. 

After the three stops, we also visited a chocolate making stop which although incredibly fancy, was super tasty. 

Margaret River to Perth – Parkrun and Busselton

Parkrun

The next morning, we did the Margaret River Parkrun. My partner and I have been doing Parkruns for a few years so we wanted to get one in Western Australia ticked off. This ended up being my 54th Parkrun! 

Dom and my Dad ran the there and back route but I walked most of the way. We had done a lot of hiking that week and my legs were pretty tired. It was a beautiful route along the river and a smaller community than the one we did in Sydney which was a great vibe. 

If you don’t know what Parkrun is – it’s a weekly timed 5km run every Saturday morning which is free! They have them all around the world now. Whilst this isn’t everyone’s idea of a holiday activity, we loved the community feel and get another location ticked off. Find your local parkrun here. 

Busselton

Busselton is a coastal town south of Perth. It has an incredibly famous jetty that is 1.7km long. At the end of the pier, they have constructed a viewing aquarium UNDER THE WATER so it is a real life aquarium, except it’s the humans that are enclosed. 

We saw fish, crabs, and lots of coral and plants growing on the wooden poles, but we have heard rumours of people seeing whales and sharks too. 

We did the self guided tour which isn’t an awful lot of time to be underwater but probably just the right amount that we needed (20 minutes). We also walked up the jetty and back but you can buy tickets for the train that runs long the pier instead which is super cute and a great idea if you’ve got kids. 

So let me know what you think about these stops! Is there anywhere else you would have liked to have visited too?