Southwest Edge - Britz

Six nights in a loop from Perth in a 4WD camper, round the south west corner of Western Australia and back inland.

Bunbury and Busselton come first on Geographe Bay, then Margaret River, which is wine country with surf breaks at the end of the side roads and karri forest behind it, where the trees reach seventy metres and a few of them have pegs driven into the trunk for climbing.

Albany follows on the south coast, the oldest European settlement in the state and a working whaling port until the late 1970s, with the Gap and the Natural Bridge on the granite headlands nearby. Hopetoun and Esperance come next along a coast of white sand and water an improbable colour, and Cape Le Grand National Park holds the best of it, with kangaroos that lie about on the beach.

Hyden closes the loop inland at Wave Rock, a granite face fifteen metres high and a hundred long, undercut and streaked so that it looks exactly like a breaking wave, reached across the Wheatbelt. Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan; and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. Seven days covers a lot of ground here, and the stretch between Albany and Esperance in particular is long enough to need an early start. Most of the route is sealed, so the 4WD is useful rather than essential, and spring is the season to aim for, when the Wheatbelt and the south coast are covered in wildflowers.