Western Australia with kids: the ultimate family travel guide

Western Australia is roughly the size of Western Europe, yet it holds fewer people than Sydney alone. That single fact explains almost everything good about travelling here with children: space, quiet, and wildlife encounters that feel genuinely wild rather than staged for a tour bus timetable. Most Australians will admit they have never made it past Perth, which is exactly why WA still feels refreshingly uncrowded compared to the well-trodden East Coast trail.

For families, that space is a gift. Beaches where your toddler can run wild without dodging fifty sunbathers. Swimming bays calm enough for nervous six-year-olds. A slower pace that means everyone actually enjoys the holiday instead of racing between ticked-off landmarks.

I have driven WA’s coastline with kids in the backseat more than once, and I have learned the hard way which distances are doable and which ones end in tears (mine, usually). This guide pulls together everything I wish someone had told me before that first trip — the destinations worth the drive, the ones you can skip, and the small details that make or break a family holiday in one of the most remote corners of the planet.

📋 TL;DR — the quick version

• ✅ Start in Perth: it is the easiest, most kid-friendly landing point, with good hospitals, playgrounds, and short transfer times.
• 🐨 Rottnest Island is unmissable: quokkas, calm swimming bays, and no cars mean kids can roam safely on two wheels.
• 🐋 Ningaloo Reef beats the Great Barrier Reef for young families: shallower water, calmer conditions, and snorkelling straight off the beach.
• 🚗 Distances are brutal: budget short flights instead of one epic road trip if your kids are under eight.
• 🏨 Self-contained apartments beat hotel rooms: you will want a kitchen and a separate space to put kids to bed more than you think.
• 🌸 Time it around wildflower season (Aug–Oct) or whale shark season (Mar–Jul) for the most memorable family experiences.
• 💰 WA is not cheap: flights and regional accommodation cost more than equivalent East Coast trips, so budget generously.

🏙️ Perth — your family’s easy landing spot

Perth is the obvious place to start, and not just because it has the airport. It is a genuinely easy city to travel with children in — wide footpaths, clean public transport, and a river foreshore practically designed for scooters and bikes. Give yourself two or three days here before pushing further afield, both to recover from the flight and to let the kids burn off energy somewhere low-stakes.

🌳 Kings park and the free attractions

Kings Park is one of the largest inner-city parks in the world, and almost everything in it is free. The treetop walkway alone is worth the visit, giving kids a bird’s-eye view over the botanic gardens without any real climbing involved.

• 🌿 Lotterywest Federation Walkway: an elevated steel walkway through eucalypt canopy that toddlers can manage in a pram and older kids love running along.
• 🎨 Free ranger-led activities: school-holiday programs run regularly and are genuinely engaging rather than a marketing exercise.
• 🏞️ Synergy Parkland playground: a huge nature-play area with flying foxes and climbing nets that can occupy kids for hours.

Cottesloe Beach is the other essential Perth stop. The water is calm, the grassy foreshore is shaded, and there are enough cafes nearby that a coffee is never more than a two-minute walk away.

🐨 Rottnest Island — the quokka capital of the world

Rottnest, or “Rotto” as locals call it, is a 25-minute ferry ride from Fremantle and quite possibly the single best family day trip in Australia. Cars are banned, which means the whole island belongs to bikes, buses, and the famously friendly quokkas who will happily wander right up to your kids for a photo.

The Basin is the swimming spot most families head for — a natural reef-protected lagoon with water so calm it barely counts as ocean swimming. Hire a bike with a child seat or trailer at the ferry terminal rather than on the island itself, since stock runs out fast in peak season.

👉 Book a Rottnest Island Ferry and Bike Hire Tour on GetYourGuide →

🍇 Margaret river — wine country has more than wine

Three hours south of Perth, Margaret River is best known for cellar doors, but there is a whole parallel universe of family attractions hiding behind the vineyards. Limestone caves you can walk through, a chocolate factory with free tastings, and beaches with enough surf-school operators to keep teenagers entertained for a week.

1. Ngilgi Cave. A short, well-lit cave system near Yallingup that is genuinely enjoyable for kids as young as five, with guided tours pointing out crystal formations along the way.
2. Margaret River Chocolate Company. Free tastings, a viewing window into the chocolate-making process, and a playground out back — a reliable circuit-breaker on a long driving day.
3. Eagles Heritage Wildlife Centre. A raptor rehabilitation centre with daily flying displays that hold kids’ attention far longer than a static zoo enclosure would.

🐋 Ningaloo reef — the reef even nervous swimmers love

This is the section I get the most questions about, and for good reason. Ningaloo Reef, near Exmouth and Coral Bay, is one of the only reef systems in the world you can snorkel straight from the beach — no boat required, which matters enormously when you are travelling with kids who get seasick or simply refuse to sit still on a vessel for an hour.

Turquoise Bay is the classic spot: wade in, drift with a gentle current over coral and reef fish, and walk back up the beach to do it again. Whale shark swims run from March to July and most operators set a minimum age of around eight, so check before booking if you have younger children in tow.

👉 Book a Ningaloo Reef Snorkelling Tour on GetYourGuide →

🏜️ Broome and the Kimberley — save it for later

Broome and the wider Kimberley region are extraordinary, but I would not take a family with children under eight there in the build-up season (October to December) — the heat and humidity are genuinely tough on small bodies. Cable Beach camel rides at sunset are a rite of passage, and the shallow, warm water is safe for paddling year-round outside stinger season.

Older kids who can handle a longer 4WD day will love Horizontal Falls and the Buccaneer Archipelago, both accessible on seaplane day trips from Broome. It is a splurge, but it is also the kind of thing your kids will still be talking about at their own kids’ dinner table one day.

🚗 Getting around Western Australia with kids

This is where most first-time WA families get their planning badly wrong. The state map makes distances look deceptively manageable, and then you realise Perth to Exmouth is a 13-hour drive, and Perth to Broome is closer to 22 hours.

• ✈️ Fly the long legs: regional airlines connect Perth to Exmouth, Broome, and Karratha, saving a full day of driving each way with restless kids.
• 🚙 Hire a car with a tow-bar-rated child seat fitting checked in advance: not every rental car in regional WA comes pre-fitted, and remote towns rarely stock spares.
• ⛽ Fuel up earlier than you think you need to: distances between servos can stretch past 200km in the north, and running low with kids aboard is not a risk worth taking.
• 🛑 Plan a stop every 90 minutes minimum: playgrounds, lookouts, or even just a roadside toilet block make a genuine difference to backseat morale.

🏨 Where to stay: picking family-friendly accommodation

Hotel rooms sound convenient until you are trying to get a toddler to sleep by 7pm while you are still eating dinner in the same room. In WA, where trips often stretch a week or more, self-contained options make far more sense.

• 🏡 Self-contained apartments: a separate bedroom and a kitchen for reheating leftovers save both money and sanity on longer stays.
• 🏕️ Caravan parks with pools: most regional WA towns have at least one, and the camp-kitchen social scene is often a highlight for kids who make holiday friends fast.
• 🏖️ Resorts with kids’ clubs: useful for the Ningaloo and Margaret River legs if you and your partner want even one dinner without a booster seat.

💰 Budgeting for a family trip through WA

Western Australia is not the budget option Australia’s East Coast backpacker trail is famous for. Flights are pricier, regional accommodation is limited so it commands higher rates, and fuel in remote areas can run well above city prices.

As a rough guide, a family of four should budget more for the Ningaloo and Kimberley legs than for Perth and Margaret River, simply because competition among accommodation providers is lower the further north you travel. Booking regional stays three to six months ahead also tends to unlock noticeably better rates than last-minute bookings.

👉 Book a Margaret River Caves and Wine Family Tour on GetYourGuide →

⚠️ Mistakes families make in WA

1. Trying to see the whole state in one trip. WA rewards depth over breadth — pick either the south-west or the north-west and do it properly rather than rushing between both.
2. Underestimating the sun. UV levels in WA’s north are genuinely extreme; a midday reapplication reminder should be non-negotiable, not optional.
3. Skipping travel insurance with medical evacuation cover. Regional hospitals are sparse, and remote medical transfers are a real (if rare) possibility worth insuring against.
4. Booking whale shark swims without checking age minimums. Save the disappointment and confirm operator age policies before you get to Exmouth, not after.
5. Not packing enough entertainment for driving days. Download shows and podcasts before you leave mobile coverage — it disappears for hours at a time on the long stretches.

🎒 Final tips before you go

Western Australia rewards families who slow down. Resist the urge to cram in every recommendation from every travel blog — including this one — and instead pick two or three regions and give them the time they deserve.

The kids probably will not remember every waterfall or lookout. They will remember the quokka that photobombed their selfie, the whale shark that swam right underneath them, and the week where the biggest decision each day was which beach to visit next.

🦘 Wildlife encounters kids will never forget

Western Australia’s wildlife is a different calibre to what you will see on the East Coast tourist trail, mostly because so much of it happens away from crowds. It is worth building a day or two of your itinerary purely around animal encounters, since these tend to be the moments kids talk about years later.

• 🐬 Dolphin encounters at Monkey Mia: wild bottlenose dolphins swim right up to the shallows most mornings, and rangers occasionally let a lucky few visitors help with the supervised feed.
• 🦘 Kangaroos on Lucky Bay: near Esperance, kangaroos genuinely laze around on the white sand beside sunbathers, making for one of the more surreal family photos you will take in Australia.
• 🐧 Little penguins on Penguin Island: a short boat ride from Rockingham, south of Perth, with a dedicated discovery centre and feeding sessions that are perfectly timed for younger kids’ attention spans.
• 🦈 Reef sharks at Turquoise Bay: harmless reef sharks are a common sight while snorkelling, and older kids usually find them more thrilling than frightening once you explain they are not interested in humans.

A quick note on safety: WA’s wildlife is generally low-risk for families who follow basic rules, but always check current stinger and crocodile warnings before letting kids swim in the state’s tropical north, particularly between October and May.