My boyfriend and I have made several attempts at describing the magic of the Margaret River region (“Margs”), when raving about it on our return home from Western Australia. Is it the Maldives-standard white-sand beaches that make it so otherworldly? Is it the fact that the sun actually sets over the sea here, unlike on the East Coast? Is it the award-winning wine and food scene just a couple of hours’ from Australia’s sunniest capital city?
Here’s the best summary we’ve landed upon so far: you could visit a new world-class beach every morning and a new world-class winery every afternoon for two weeks and you’d be far from running out of either. Now, here’s the even wilder part: you’d probably have most of those beaches and wineries to yourself.
So, where is this mythical land of sun, sea and wine, and why have hardly any Brits heard of it? Just a couple of hours’ drive from Perth – the same city hosting some of the biggest Ashes and Lions matches this year – it turns out. Which is exactly why you should add it to the top of your Australia bucket list, if you’re looking to jump on the latest sports-tripping hype and make an adventure of it, as tens of thousands are expected to do for the cricket and rugby events later this year (15,000 additional tourists jetted into Australia for the last Lions tour, and 30,000 for the Ashes).
In fact, book tickets for the Lions’ first Aussie game in Perth this June or the Ashes’ first test match in Perth this November, and you could be swimming with the friendly stingrays at the world-famous Hamelin Bay by lunchtime the next day. Just don’t tell everyone else.
"Perth is actually the closest, sunniest and one of the most beautiful areas of Australia, but it's traditionally been overlooked by British tourists who think of Australia's east coast when planning big trips Down Under,” says Elen Thomas, UK and France Country Manager for Tourism Western Australia.
Thomas says she’s seen a sharp rise in travel bookings around July and November ahead of the Ashes and Lions this year. Sports tourism was reportedly responsible for 10 per cent of global tourism in 2024 and is only set to skyrocket over the next decade, according to SkyScanner, with nearly a third of 25-to-35-year-olds planning trips around sports events next year, and Australia right there at the top of the leaderboard thanks to its hosting of both the cricket and the rugby in the second half of 2025.
June – the month the Ashes cricket series kicks off Down Under – is technically Australia’s winter, but temperatures still get up as high as 22 degrees over on the west coast, known for its 300 days of sunshine a year and lack of humidity compared to east coast cities like Sydney and Melbourne. Indeed, my off-season road-trip from Perth down to Margaret River saw temperatures get up as high as the late twenties in the middle of the day – perfect for a sporty holiday of hikes, runs, swims and watersports – while, unlike on the east coast, nighttimes were actually cool enough for sleeping.
Locals say winter is the best time to visit, in fact. Not only are there fewer crowds and more comfortable temperatures, but you’re also more likely to spot humpback whales as they migrate along the coast.
There are 19 pristine beaches within easy reach of the Perth (our favourite was Cottesloe, mostly thanks to its old-school pavilion serving great coffee and covered in kookaburras), while Rottnest Island, the car-free paradise known for its resident population of friendly wallaby-like creatures known as quokkas, is just a 30-minute ferry-ride from the city centre.
For us though, the real draw of Perth was a two to three-hour drive south from the city centre (shoutout to campervan gurus THL, who kitted us out with a spacious white Maui Motorhome and an app pointing us to all the road-trip essentials we’d need). Friends in Sydney had long hailed Margaret River to be their favourite spot in Australia and it only took us a couple of hours of touching down to understand why.
Campervan parked up at our hillside camping spot in Prevelly, we grabbed some beers from the campsite shop and strolled bare-footed up to Surfers Point, one of the region’s top sunset spots looking out over the Indian Ocean. Even on a (rare) cloudy day, it was magical, and felt like we were looking out over the edge of the world. We went back for an exact repeat the next day.
Days are best spent road-tripping in Margaret River. All set with our own hotel-stroke-changing-cabin thanks to the Maui van, we’d load up with coffee and a picnic each day and head for the beach – or rather, as many of them as we could possibly squeeze in. “This feels like proper Australia,” I remarked to my boyfriend one day as we drove along a tree-lined avenue between two snorkel spots, kangaroo signs dotting the side of the road, not another vehicle in sight.
The beauty is that it felt like we had the roads and beaches to ourselves, but there was enough of a buzz when we wanted it. Friday night was spent tasting local ales on the lawn at Eagle Bay Brewery and we felt like we could’ve been at a wedding in Tuscany. The locals are happy here and it’s easy to see why.
A few highlights, if you’re drawing up your Margaret River bucket list: a dip in the natural spa at Injidup, snorkelling at Meelup Beach and The Aquarium near Yallingup (yes, the place names are part of the fun), and breakfasts at the White Elephant Cafe in Prevelly and Margaret River Bakery (order the almond croissant or mushroom frittata).
It’s worth a night’s stopover in Mandurah on your drive back to Perth, too, if you have time. The seaside city – famous for its almost guaranteed dolphin-sightings and estuary twice the size of Sydney Harbour – is just an hour’s drive from Perth and might not be widely known outside Australia, but was recently crowned Australia’s Top Tourism Town for 2023. Mandurah Cruises’ seven-course wild seafood tour was a highlight of the whole trip. We caught our own lobsters and were served them straight from the barbecue just an hour or so later.
My boyfriend and I quickly concluded we’d barely scratched the surface of our south-west-corner-of-Western-Australia bucket list as we took the four-hour flight back to Sydney – but the truth is it was hard to write one. It’s not really like visiting Sydney and ticking off the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. It’s not like swinging into Melbourne for the tennis or the cricket or a trip along the Great Ocean Road. It’s just, well, being there for a while. Waking up next to a new vineyard. Swimming from a new beach, dolphin-spotting. Hunkering down with fish and chips for sunset (over the sea!) again. You can dip your toe in and tick a few beaches and wineries off, sure. But the magic only really comes when you stay a while and settle in.
Call it what you like – sports tourism, event-cationing – but if planning a holiday around an event is about discovering a place you wouldn’t otherwise have visited and somewhere that definitely doesn’t feel anything like home, there can’t be many places further from drizzly London than Margaret River and its almost guaranteed sunshine and crystal seas (Quantas now runs direct daily flights from London to Perth). Just remember to whisper it when you’re booking your tickets – you can leave the Opera House and Great Ocean Road for everyone else.
