WA’s Cape to Cape walk a feast of glittery water views
This corner of Western Australia is a ‘place of’ many wonders best seen on foot and in comfort.
When our guides leave late on day one, it’s as if they fade into the scrub. That’s how tightly Injidup Spa Retreat is tucked among the acacia, pig face, kangaroo paw and beard heath that carpets the coastline of Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park.
Here, in Western Australia’s stunning southwest, there is no shortage of wild, natural beauty but there are also plenty of man-made distractions. On his 20-minute drive home through the Margaret River region, Walk Into Luxury guide Rusty Creighton will pass 16 wineries, four breweries and a chocolate shop. “Sometimes I even make it without stopping,” he says.
As a traveller from “over east” (as westerners call the lot of us), for whom merely making it to Perth without ruinous in-flight announcements about border closures is worth a few fist pumps, I feel lucky to be here, in May, before WA slams the door shut again.
My mission is the Cape Naturaliste to Cape Leeuwin walk, although a declaration of “I’ve done WA’s Cape to Cape” wouldn’t pass the pub test. The trek is 135km long and packed with beaches, which is romantic in theory but remorseless on the calves in practice. Walk Into Luxury’s version takes guests to hopping-off points for each day’s director’s cut, with only brief sand meanders.
It’s a four-day feast of glittering water views. The itinerary includes a dinner prepared by a private chef and other meals in hatted Margaret River restaurants but the real luxury is by day, with guides taking care of tracks and snacks. Our only job is to try to keep a grip, for dignity’s sake, roughly on our location along this fearsomely beautiful coast. “A lot has changed in the past 30 years but the coastal track hasn’t,” says our second guide, Shane Partington.
This is Wardandi country, in part of the southwest where many original Noongar place names remain: Quindalup, Gnarabup, Kaloorup, Dwellingup and Manjimup are just a few. The suffix “up” means “place of”. Wilyabrup is the place of the northern sky. Injidup is the place of the red pea flower. Each name thus invites the question: what is this the place of? And is that plant, animal or feature of the land, sea or sky still here?
Late afternoons, pleasantly sore post-walk, are spent seeing the sun ooze into the Indian Ocean from our private decks. The road into the retreat is on the track itself, a short amble from limestone cliffs. You’d barely know you’d arrived if you weren’t handed the key to a villa stocked with local food, wine and a cheese so omnipresent I’m reminded of a time in the south of France when I had to dig a grave for a wheel of Epoisses de Bourgogne to rest in pungent peace.
“Are you ladies all on the run from your partners?” asks Jason, the sole bloke in our group of eight.
All of the women, bar one, are West Australian. They overtake me when I crouch to delight in the fractal patterns of the shark tooth wattle or the pink pimelea with comments such as “Lovely – that one grows well in my garden”, bursting my wildflower bubble. No sooner do I point to a white arum lily in the Boranup Karri tree forest than a hand shoots down to rip it out.
“Funeral flower,” one walking companion says. “Terrible pest.”
Our hike to Wilyabrup sea cliffs is like bush-bashing through a bouquet of the waxy, wiry Australian natives that last in a vase for months. The oils of the melaleuca (tea tree), native rosemary and boronia (one of the world’s most expensive perfume bases) release their fragrance when you brush against them. Blended with the salty sea spray, this outdoor apothecary of peppery, lemon and woody scents is a remedy for any sore heads from one wine too many the night before.
Everything about this landscape is a bit different for an easterner, such as the bulbous marri tree gumnuts that inspired May Gibbs’s book Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.
For a few weeks in spring, the cowslip orchid and pink enamel orchid are among 100 others that bloom between these two capes. They’re dormant during my visit but pops of colour and pattern are everywhere.
On a beach close to Yallingup, the state’s most exclusive postcode, I beachcomb my way across macrame-like clusters of orange coral, puffs of flamingo-pink sea sponge and ropy black seaweed.
And then there are the waves. “You don’t get anything like this over east,” says Partington.
The Margaret River Pro surf competition is happening close by and the 2m waves have risen to the occasion. “Look at the time it takes for the wave to fall,” he says. “It seems to be going in slow motion but that’s because it’s falling from a great height.”
The series of perfectly straight ridges we see was “made in Antarctica”, Partington says. “Made by what?” I ask, feeling a tad idiotic, as if I’m asking where food comes from. “Wind,” he replies.
A group of surfers stands on the cliff above a famous break called Bear’s Bommie. They are still and silent; horizon stares beneath sun-bleached hair. The gravelly sound of a board being waxed comes from behind a van. I wonder how they get down and then spot a narrow track flowing vein-like through the scrub to the sand.
We sightseers are not given even a sideways glance in this deeply local place.
Like author Tim Winton, Partington is from Albany on the south coast.
Parts of Simon Baker’s 2018 adaptation of Winton’s novel Breath were uncannily similar to Partington’s own surf-soaked boyhood, he says. I ask where along the coast the sharks are getting the surfers. “Well, here,” he admits. “But there’s more people in the water now, more helicopters and yes, more sharks. But the hype isn’t in line with reality.”
He pauses and laughs. “That’s what I tell myself every time I paddle out anyway.”
At night back at Injidup (another famous surf break), where a skein of driftwood decorates the wall above my bed, I look up some quotes from Breath. “I lay awake as distant waves pummeled the shore,” Winton wrote. “The earth beneath us seemed to hum. I used to get out of bed and lie on the karri floorboards and feel the rumble in my skull. It sang in every joist of the house.”
To walk this coast during a big autumn swell is to get a glimpse of Winton’s inspiration, even if you don’t paddle out yourself. And to learn some other poetry, too.
The surf forecaster calls these waves a long period swell. The surfer? Corduroy to the horizon.
In the know
Walk Into Luxury’s signature Cape to Cape itinerary combines four days of walking with Perth transfers, three night’s accommodation at Indjidup Spa Retreat and Margaret River food and wine, including winery visits. Trips depart in autumn (March-June) and spring (September-December); from $3150 a person, twin-share, $3550 for solo travellers. The operator has launched a seven-day package that includes the walk and three nights at Perth’s COMO The Treasury hotel; from $4250 a person.
Kate Hennessy was a guest of Walk Into Luxury and Tourism Western Australia.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout