Our favourite beaches

My earliest memories are of swimming and fishing at Bunker Bay. Many hours a day during the school holidays were spent in the clear turquoise water at Bunkers. 

Those locations you went to as a child hold that something special you then want to share with your kids.

Today there is a great cafe restaurant just off the beach with good coffee and food.

This is our favourite Victorian beach. Port Fairy has it all: great unspoilt town, picturesque river, great music festival and wonderful beaches for swimming and surfing.

Great coffee at Port Fairy Coffee Roasters and great coffee and food at Bank St Cafe.

The Port Fairy Folk Festival is well worth a visit too - we've been so many times. 2026 lineup is looking good.

Denmark is a town blessed with a few beaches so there is something there for everyone. Our favourites are Greens Pool and Madfish Bay beach. Greens Pool is almost completely sheltered from the waves of the Great Southern Ocean by the rounded rock boulders typical to this area and is a beautiful safe swimming beach.

Madfish Bay is actually a group of small beaches separated by natural rock outcroppings. The waters are sheltered with large rock-reefs not far off shore. The turquoise waters of Madfish Bay in summer are fabulous.

Great coffee at Ravens and a trip to the wineries is compulsory with our favourites being Oranje Tractor and Singlefile Wines.

Dunsborough in WA holds a special place for us. It's a place where we holidayed with our parents back in the day and later bought our kids to enjoy the beaches and country.

The safe waters of Geographe Bay are always calm and inviting. It's the sort of beach you spend all day going in and out of the water. This is where Suncheeter was born after a day in the sun and constant sunscreen application but getting sunburnt anyway. The plan of designing a beach cover up as either a swim top or a swim dress seemed like a great place to start.

Dunsborough has some of the best coffee in Australia (big call, I know) at Yallingup Coffee and some great places to eat: Blue Manna Bistro, Peace Pizza and as well as Yarri. Wineries are also worth a visit : Wise Wines and Flametree Wines. Another favourite of ours is the bread at Yallingup woodfired bread. They are a short drive out of Dunsborough, located in the middle of the bush. We have to buy 2 loaves at a time as the smell in the car is too much and one loaf gets sacrificed on the journey home.

If you wander further down Caves Road towards Margaret River there a massive selection of wineries to visit - some of Australia's best.

I have always loved the beach and been drawn to the rhythm of the ocean. Starting with my roots in England visiting Nan and Pop down in Cornwall where we would camp in a field near the sea in Carbis Bay, which has St. Ives at one end of the bay and Godrevy Lighthouse (in Cornish Golowji Godrevi), at the other. Our gaggle of siblings, cousins and friends would run-amok amongst the sand dunes, rock pools and in the sea, running wild until 11pm in the English Summer light. Down the cliffs, on Gwithian Beach in the watery English summer sun we would swim in Sheeps Pool, body-surf in the sea when the tide came back in, walk to the Red River, red as a result of ancient tin mines, or march up to the Jam Pot, an eccentric pot shaped shop to get ice-creams. 

Today no trip to Gwithian is complete without a visit to the legendary Jam Pot Cafe - great for a Cornish pasty and cup of tea. Originally an old coastguard lookout nestled in the Gwithian Towans, it's now a great cafe.

Eagle Bay, like most other beaches in Geographe Bay has crystal clear water, white sand and very few people. A few kilometres from Dunsborough out towards Cape Naturaliste there are now a few wineries from the main road to the bay (Wise Winery is worth a visit) and the glimpses of the bay from the road are always an appetiser to the actual beach.

We usually take our Kathmandu sun shelter as we are usually at the beach all day, bringing along lunch and snacks!

Eagle Bay can be a luxurious escape, with plenty of WA's most affluent properties located nearby. Facing north, this is one of the best swimming beaches with its sweeping wide beach and shallow calm water. It is also great for kayaking, snorkelling, photography and picnicking with a shady spot near Point Picquet.

Eagle Bay is still fairly untouched being part of the Meelup Regional Park so there is still plenty of wildlife - kangaroos particularly - around and there are plenty of walking trails through the bush. Being untouched also means there are few shops or cafes - which makes it all the more appealing!