Southwest WA Day 1: Myalup, A’maze’n Margaret River and Hamelin Bay Beach Park

We headed off today for our first “family vacation” with my bestie and her two kids in tow. We all drove from Perth together in her 4WD.

We left Perth at 9:30am and stopped in at the Old Coast Road Brewery in Myalup as stop 1 after about 90mins of driving. This was a good stop for us as we did our food shopping the day before so didn’t need to go into any major tourist towns to get anything on the way and it gave the kids lots of space to run around if they wanted to. The brewery had some great beer options (including a few low % ones for drivers and stein sized takeaways) and we were lucky enough to organise our lunch stop to be at the same time as some friends of mine from Canberra who were coming the opposite way!

Stop 2 was at “Amaze’n Margaret River” which was another 90 mins away and has a hedge maze and mini golf on site. They also have a little cafe for those looking for a coffee spot and some scones. It was $26 per adult ($18 per child) to access the maze and that was without the mini golf. As we arrived around 3pm they did say we might struggle to get nigh activities done before closing at 5pm so we just did the maze. We found our way to the centre lookout quite easily but did have to use a little bit of google maps assistance to get out haha.

We then drove our final distance of 30 mins (with a short stop for fresh bread) to arrive at the Hamelin Bay Holiday Park where we had a 6 person ocean view cabin booked. Now, booking this was a pain in the butt! They open Dec/Jan bookings by phone on May 1st and I rang over 200 times (across 2.5hrs) before I finally got through and the only 2 nights were left in January one these dates. So we took what we could get. This cabin is fantastic though – right on the beach, sleeps 6 (1 queen bed, 2 single beds, 1 trundle bed, 1 rollaway bed) and is fully equipped including a Weber BBQ with gas bottle. There is no phone reception or wifi here which is sort of awesome and sort of a challenge. They also run off bore water which is good to know before you arrive as you need to bring your own drinking water.

As well as the amazing stingrays (see photos further down) we also saw plenty of very chonky kookaburras.

We walked on the beach, paddled with some friendly stingrays and watched the sunset before a few games of “hand to hand wombat” and bed.