Things to do in Nannup & Surrounds

Tulips & Gardens

Nannup is the Garden Village, and each August the Nannup Flower and Garden Festival lines the main street with more than 20,000 tulips, daffodils and hyacinths. Two self-guided trails — the Golden Wattle Arts Trail and the Blue Wren Garden Trail — open private gardens and studios across the region.

Wineries

You don’t have to drive to Margaret River for good wine. The Blackwood Valley has around fifteen cellar doors, and Blackwood Wines, in the heart of Nannup, pairs its own drops with a restaurant and gallery.

Restaurants

There are several restaurants, cafes and a pub in Nannup, and a tavern, French restaurant, gluten-free café and gourmet fare in Balingup. Forty-five minutes away, the Wine & Truffle Co. serves truffle-inspired dishes in season.

Cheese

Cambray Cheese, twelve kilometres out of Nannup, is an award-winning sheep and cow’s-milk dairy. The farm shop is open 10am–3pm daily for tastings and sales, with viewing windows onto the cheese room.

Galleries

Balingup and Nannup are full of small galleries showing local painters and sculptors — an easy afternoon of browsing between the two timber towns.

Golden Valley Tree Park

Golden Valley Tree Park spreads over sixty hectares in the Balingup hills — the largest arboretum in WA, its heritage trees more than a century old. Entry is free, it is open seven days, and six self-guided tracks wind through the World and Australian collections. Autumn is the show.

Nannup Lavender Farm

Nannup Lavender Farm, on the Vasse Highway, has grown lavender since 1999 and is the only lavender farm south of Perth still open to visitors. The garden is at its purple best in December and January, with a café Thursday to Sunday and entry to the garden by donation.

Arts & Crafts

Both towns reward a slow browse through their craft shops, and the Old Cheese Factory Craft Centre in Balingup — WA’s largest art, craft and antique showroom, in a 1930s timber factory — is worth the stop for its café alone.

Tinderbox

Tinderbox, in Balingup, makes a whole apothecary of locally-grown herbal products — balms, teas, skincare and remedies — from an old timber shopfront full of bush furniture and local art.

Barrabup Pool

Barrabup Pool, in the St John Brook Conservation Park, is a calm freshwater swimming and canoeing hole ringed by tall forest, with a platform for easy entry and a picnic area. It sits on the Old Timberline and Sidings Rail Trails, fifteen minutes from Nannup.

Mythic Mazes

Mythic Mazes, fifteen minutes north of Nannup on the Vasse Highway, mixes hedge mazes with sculpture gardens and a gallery of myths, monsters and forest spirits.

Scenic Drives

Beyonderup Falls sits on Tourist Route 251, the Blackwood Scenic Drive — forty kilometres of one of the prettiest runs in the South West. Do the triangle: Nannup, Balingup, Bridgetown.

Walk Trails

Walk trails ring Nannup, from short strolls to sections of the Bibbulmun Track at Balingup, plus the Old Timberline and Sidings Rail Trails that loop out to Barrabup Pool.

Marron

Marron — the world’s largest freshwater crayfish, endemic to this corner of WA — are farmed near Nannup at Chestnut Brae, where you can catch and cook your own, or simply buy them fresh to bring back to your chalet.

Western Tourist Radio

Tune to Western Tourist Radio on 87.6 FM for local stories, events and music across the South West, or browse touristradio.com.au for what’s on in each town.

www.touristradio.com.au