Busselton

Busselton is the family beach town of the South West, and the reason is Geographe Bay. It faces north, it is shallow, it is sheltered, and it stays warm and flat when the coast further south is being pounded. Add the longest timber-piled jetty in the southern hemisphere and you have a destination that works for a day, a weekend or a week.

The drive from Perth

Around 220 kilometres, about two and a half hours, on Kwinana Freeway then Forrest Highway then Bussell Highway. Dual carriageway for most of it and sealed the whole way, so this is the easiest long drive on this list.

Stops worth building in:

• Mandurah, 50 minutes out, for the boardwalk and the dolphin cruises.
• Bunbury and the Dolphin Discovery Centre, where wild dolphins come into the shallows most mornings.
• Ludlow Tuart Forest, just before Busselton, the last significant tuart forest left anywhere.

What to do when you get there

The jetty first. It runs 1.841 kilometres out into the bay, which is a 25 minute walk each way, or you can take the Rio Tinto Solar Express train, a 1.7 kilometre round trip of about 45 minutes running hourly from 10am to 4pm.

At the end of it, the Busselton Underwater Observatory sits eight metres below the surface, a 9.5 metre chamber with eleven viewing windows and more than 300 marine species on the piles outside. The full tour runs about an hour and 45 minutes including the train, with roughly 45 minutes in the chamber. Book online, because walk-up spots are not guaranteed.

Beyond the jetty:

• Busselton Jetty Marine Discovery Centre for the touch tanks, good with kids.
• ArtGeo Cultural Complex, the old courthouse turned gallery precinct.
• Wonnerup House, an 1859 homestead and one of the best preserved in the state.
• Meelup Regional Park, 20 minutes west, for the quiet bays.
• Geographe Bay itself, which is calm enough for stand up paddleboards on most mornings.

When to go

December to March for the swimming, when the bay is at its warmest and flattest. September to late November for the whales, because Geographe Bay is one of very few Australian bays where humpbacks and southern rights share the same water in the same season, often with calves. Winter is wet, but the observatory runs year round.

Two dates to avoid unless you are there for them: Ironman Western Australia takes over the town on 6 December 2026, and CinefestOZ runs 29 August to 6 September 2026. Accommodation disappears on both.

How long you need

Busselton is genuinely doable in a day if the jetty is all you want: leave Perth at 8am, tour the observatory at midday, swim in the afternoon, home by 7pm. It is five hours of driving for a good day out.

A weekend is the better shape. Day one for the jetty, the observatory and the bay. Day two heading west along the coast to Meelup, Eagle Bay and Bunker Bay, or south into the wine country around Wilyabrup, which is only 30 minutes away. If you have three days, Busselton makes a sensible base for the whole Cape to Cape region, because accommodation here is usually cheaper than Dunsborough or Margaret River and everything is within 45 minutes.

The hire car we would put you in

The SUV 7-Seater, a Mitsubishi Outlander or similar. Busselton is where people bring the whole family, and seven seats means the grandparents come too. It is automatic, it drives like a car rather than a truck, and after two and a half hours on the freeway with kids in the back you will be glad of the space. Two bags of luggage capacity plus the third row folded down handles the beach gear.

Travelling as a couple? The Compact SUV is the better value pick and still has a comfortable boot for a weekend. If it is a bigger group again, the People Mover takes eight and four bags, which is the only car in the fleet that carries a full extended family and their luggage in one go.

Before you leave the depot

Book the observatory before you drive down, since tour times are fixed and the chamber holds a limited number of people. Bring reef shoes for the jetty steps and a windproof layer, because the bay is calm but the end of a 1.8 kilometre jetty is not. If whales are the plan, book a cruise out of Dunsborough, 25 minutes further west, rather than Busselton itself.