WA South West MTB Road Trip: Collie, Nannup, Pemberton and Margaret River
The best way to do south west WA mountain biking is as a loop: Perth to Collie, Collie to Nannup, Nannup to Pemberton, Pemberton to Margaret River, then home. That's about 800 km of driving over seven days, with no single leg longer than three hours, and four very different trail towns at the stops. Clay and pea gravel at Collie, pine-plantation gravity at Nannup, karri loam at Pemberton, then machine-built flow and granite in Margaret River's Wooditjup National Park.
The timing this week is hard to ignore. Collie is hosting the 2026 AusCycling MTB Enduro Oceania and National Championships from 21 to 25 October, the third and final year the event runs on the Wambenger Trails. If you leave Perth now you can watch Sunday's elite stages and ride your way south as the race crowd drives home.
Quick picks
- Best first stop: Collie's Wambenger network, about 2 hours from Perth and roughly 170 km of trail across six networks
- Best shuttle day: Nannup's Tank 7, with commercial uplift and Mannup's double-black drop
- Best dirt: Pemberton, where the karri loam grips wet or dry
- Best rest day that isn't a rest day: Margaret River, with Wooditjup's flow trails a 10-minute pedal from town and wineries on the Wadandi Track
- Best detour: Linga Longa, near Balingup, if a Public Gravity Day lines up with your trip
What does the South West WA MTB road trip route look like?
Here's the loop at a glance. Drive times are without stops; the South West roads are narrow and winding through the forest, so pad every leg by 20 minutes and don't drive the karri country at dusk, when the kangaroos are out.
| Day | Leg | Distance | Drive time | Ride | Trails on our directory |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Perth → Collie | ~200 km | ~2 h | Mt Lennard / Pile Road | 7 |
| 2 | Collie (stay) | — | short hops | Arklow, Wellington Dam | (Wambenger, see below) |
| 3 | Collie → Nannup via Balingup | ~110 km | ~1 h 30 | Tank 7 (or Linga Longa) | 17 (Linga Longa 24) |
| 4 | Nannup → Pemberton | ~75 km | ~1 h | Morning laps at Tank 7 | — |
| 5 | Pemberton (stay) | — | — | Pemberton MTB Park | 16 |
| 6 | Pemberton → Margaret River | 139 km | ~1 h 40 | Wooditjup Trails | 37 |
| 7 | Margaret River → Perth | ~270 km | ~3 h | The Creek, Wadandi Track | 8 / 5 |
A note on those trail counts, because they look low next to the kilometre figures operators publish. Our directory counts named trails. Tank 7 has 17 on the site and is marketed as about 35 km; Pemberton has 16 and around 30 km of singletrack. A single 8 km descent is one row in our database and a big chunk of a brochure's total. Both numbers are right; they're just measuring different things.
Why take a campervan on a South West MTB trip?
You can do this loop in a car with a rack and a booking at every stop. Plenty of people do. But for this particular trip a campervan solves three problems at once.
First, the bikes ride inside. That keeps them out of the red dust on the gravel roads, out of the rain in the karri country, and locked away when you stop for lunch in Balingup. Second, the towns are small. Nannup and Pemberton have a handful of cottages and a caravan park each, and Collie during Nationals week has every bed taken by race teams. A van takes the accommodation problem off the table. Third, the trailheads are where you want to wake up. Several stops on this loop have campgrounds within pedalling distance of the dirt, which turns a 7am shuttle from a chore into a short roll downhill.
Where to park it up:
- Collie: DBCA campgrounds at Potters Gorge (Wellington Dam) and Honeymoon Pool are both inside Wellington National Park, close to the Wambenger trailheads. Book through Park Stay WA, and don't wait during race week.
- Linga Longa: on-site camping on gravity days, with toilets and hot showers but no powered sites.
- Nannup: the riverside caravan park in town, with Tank 7 just 2 km east.
- Pemberton: the caravan park sits about 2 km from the Swimming Pool Road trailhead.
- Margaret River: RAC Margaret River Nature Park, on Carters Road roughly 100 m from The Creek trailhead.
We've covered more parks with camping close to the trails in our guide to camping near MTB trails.
Days 1–2: Collie and the Wambenger Trails
Collie used to be WA's coal town. The State Government's Collie Adventure Trails money has turned it into the state's biggest mountain bike network, branded Wambenger after the local Noongar word for the brush-tailed phascogale. DBCA puts the Wellington National Park section at almost 95 km after 47 km of new trail opened, and the Arklow forest block north of town adds 54 km more. Collie markets the whole area at around 170 km across six networks.
Our directory currently lists one Collie network, the Mt Lennard / Pile Road trails, with 7 trails. It's the western arm of Wambenger, about half an hour west of Collie and the same from Bunbury. Ride it first. Lennard Circuit (6.7 km, green) warms you up, Grizzly (5.4 km, blue) is the classic cross-country descent to the lower trailhead, and Mill Brook is the reason to come: an 8 km one-way black cross-country trail that follows the old Millbrook fire road down to the river and finishes with a gruelling rocky climb up the Lennard Track. The lower trailhead on Pile Road sits opposite the Wild Bull Brewery. That's a dangerous place to finish a ride.
There are no toilets and no water at Mt Lennard, so fill up in town. There's no shuttle listed for the park either, so either pedal back to the top or leave a car at each end. Dogs are out: 1080 baiting is ongoing in the national park.
Day 2 is Arklow. Ray's Trail car park is on Harris River Road, about 5 km north of town, and you can ride there from the main street on the Munda Biddi. Spend the afternoon around Wellington Dam and Honeymoon Pool, where the Enduro Nationals stages ran in 2025. Send It, Cash Out and Back Breaker were on that course, and the soil swings from grippy clay on the Cash Out side to pea gravel on the dam side that rolls like ball bearings when it dries out.
Is Collie busy during the 2026 Enduro Nationals?
Yes. The AusCycling Enduro Oceania and National Championships run 21–25 October 2026: practice on the 21st and 23rd, the Oceania race and the team-based Wambenger Gravity Challenge on the 22nd, juniors, e-bikes and adaptive on the 24th, and elite, junior and masters titles on Sunday the 25th. Expect race stages to be taped off and every bed in town booked. Check DBCA's park alerts for closures before you plan a ride on a race trail.
Day 3: Collie to Nannup, with a Linga Longa detour
The drive south runs about 110 km and takes roughly an hour and a half through Donnybrook and Balingup. The road is slow and pretty, through orchards and the Blackwood Valley.
If a Linga Longa Public Gravity Day falls on your trip, stop. The park is on 700 acres of private land about 18 km from Balingup, with roughly 200 m of vertical and a trail list heavy with double-blacks. Our directory has 24 trails there. The operator runs the shuttle (private shuttling is banned), and the gate stays locked outside gravity days, events and booked private days. Check the Public Gravity Days calendar before you build a day around it. WA Gravity Enduro Round 8 runs there on 7–8 November 2026.
Otherwise, keep going to Nannup and get an afternoon in at Tank 7. The network sits in a working pine plantation 2 km east of town. Three Chillies Design built it in three stages between 2020 and 2022. Our directory has 17 trails; the Shire markets about 35 km. You can climb the Stairway to Seven (1.7 km, blue) straight from town, which is the way to do it on day one before you've paid for a shuttle.
Day 4: Nannup morning, Pemberton afternoon
Book the morning shuttle. WA Adventure Shuttles runs the uplift to the Tank 7 lookout, and private vehicles aren't allowed inside the network, so this is the only way to stack laps. Easy Tiger is the blue you'll run three times without getting bored. Flylacine and Slippery Gypsy are the committed blacks. Mannup is the double-black with the wood-and-steel drop that everybody films and fewer people ride.
Two things to check before you drive in. Harvesting in the plantation closes sections for weeks at a time, and the Shire posts notices on signage and the Experience Nannup app. Also, the town hosted the UCI Gravel World Championships earlier this month, which says something about how seriously Nannup takes bikes.
Grab lunch in town, then take the Vasse Highway south. Pemberton is about an hour away.
For more parks where someone else does the driving to the top, see our roundup of shuttle bike parks across Australia.
Day 5: Why is Pemberton the highlight of south west WA mountain biking?
The dirt. Pemberton's trails run through old-growth karri forest on the north-west edge of town, and the karri loam is dark, slightly damp and grips far better than the dry laterite further north. The trees overhead are 60-plus metres tall. It's the one stop on this loop people fly in from the east coast to ride.
The trailhead is on Swimming Pool Road, 2 km from the town centre, with a pump track and a 1.5 km skills loop at the car park. Our directory lists 16 trails across roughly 30 km of singletrack on Main Hill and Pump Hill. Start on Cool Running, the long blue, to read the dirt. Then step up: Relentless Blue (black, despite the name), Bloody Mary, and the steep Nationals and Wahoo.
There's no commercial shuttle at Pemberton. Most people pedal, and the two hills keep the climbs short enough that you'll hardly notice. The general store in town carries some spares. After big storms, fallen karri branches are the main hazard, and the Pemberton Cycling Association volunteers clear them, so check their page before an early start.
Days 6–7: Margaret River, then home
It's 139 km and about an hour and 40 minutes from Pemberton to Margaret River. Drive it in the morning and ride Wooditjup in the afternoon.
Wooditjup is three connected pockets just north of town: Compartment 10, The Pines and Wharncliffe, about 45 km in total, mostly machine-built and mostly blue. The trail names come from fairytales (Senderella, Gulliver's Travels, Happily Ever After), and the riding is fast berms, rollers and tabletops rather than tech. Rotary Park on Carters Road has toilets, water and barbecues, and it's a 10-minute pedal from town on the Wadandi Track, so you can leave the van parked. We have 37 trails listed there.
On day 7, ride The Creek before the drive home. It sits on the south side of Carters Road and is the older, rougher counterpart to Wooditjup: hand-built, about 14 km, with granite slabs, creek lines and rock gardens. Goobers Pool is the descent, Classic Creek the flowing one, Valley Girls the jump line, and Western Suburbs the rocky one. Our directory has 8 trails there. If you stayed at the RAC park next door, you can be riding before breakfast.
If anyone in the van wants a gentler morning, the Wadandi Track is the answer. It's a converted railway, near-flat and mostly compacted gravel, with 46 km open in two sections. The Cowaramup to Margaret River stretch is the pretty one, through peppermint and young karri with cafés at either end. A $17.5 million expansion is now under contract, and the finished trail will run almost 110 km between Busselton and Augusta.
Then it's about 270 km and three hours back to Perth up the Bussell and Forrest highways.
Can you ride the Munda Biddi between the stops?
Partly. The Munda Biddi Trail runs more than 1,000 km from the Perth Hills to Albany and goes through Collie, Nannup and Pemberton. It doesn't go to Margaret River. Between towns it takes the long way through the forest, so the town-to-town stages are much longer than the drives in the table above.
For a road trip, the useful bits are short ones close to town. In Collie, a 20 km Munda Biddi realignment links Wellington Dam with the town centre, and the trail is also the easy way to pedal out to Arklow. In Nannup and Pemberton, ride a few kilometres out and back on a recovery morning. Bikepacking the whole route is a different trip, and a two-week one.
When to go and what to carry
Autumn and spring are the windows. March to May brings cool, firm trails, and September to November brings wildflowers and grip. Late October, when this post goes live, is about as good as it gets. Summer works but it's hot, and DBCA and the plantation managers can close forest on Total Fire Ban days from December to March. Winter rides fine at Pemberton and Margaret River, but Collie's clay gets heavy and Nannup's Black Ice lives up to its name.
Pack for a week of mixed conditions. There's no water at Mt Lennard, so carry 2–3 L in a hydration pack on any Collie ride. Pea gravel and granite at Collie and The Creek are hard on tyres, so bring a tubeless plug kit. And since none of the Collie trailheads have a bike wash, a portable washer that runs off the van's water tank earns its place by day two.
FAQ
How many days do you need for a South West WA MTB road trip? Seven days covers Collie, Nannup, Pemberton and Margaret River with one full riding day at each and short drives between them. Five days works if you cut the second Collie day and the Wadandi Track. Fewer than that and you'll spend more time driving than riding.
What is the best time of year for south west WA mountain biking? Autumn (March to May) and spring (September to November). Trails are firm and temperatures mild, and spring adds wildflowers. Summer is rideable but hot, and Total Fire Ban days can close forest trails. Winter suits Pemberton's loam but makes Collie's clay heavy going.
Which South West WA parks have shuttles? Nannup's Tank 7 has commercial uplift through WA Adventure Shuttles, and Linga Longa runs its own shuttle on gravity days. Pemberton and the Margaret River networks have no commercial shuttle, and none is listed for Mt Lennard. Plan to pedal or run a two-car shuttle there.
Do you need a campervan for this trip? No, but it helps. A van carries bikes inside, lets you sleep at campgrounds near trailheads like Potters Gorge, Pemberton and RAC Margaret River Nature Park, and gets around the shortage of beds in small towns. That matters most in Collie during Enduro Nationals week and Margaret River in school holidays.
Is Collie worth visiting outside the Enduro Nationals? Yes. Wambenger is WA's largest network, at around 170 km across six networks, including almost 95 km in Wellington National Park and 54 km at Arklow. Outside race week the trails are quiet, the campgrounds have space, and Mill Brook's 8 km of black cross-country is all yours.
Plan your trip
Start with the Top 10 MTB parks in WA for park-by-park depth, and our MTB long-weekend getaways from Perth if you only have three days. The WA trails map shows every stop on this loop, and the Western Australia state page lists the rest of the state's parks.
If you only ride one trail on the whole trip, make it Mill Brook at Mt Lennard. Then finish at the brewery.