Bunbury, Australia
Bunbury: Woodchip Capital of the South West
"Where the whales visit and the woodchips never leave"
Official Coat of Arms
A shield bearing a bottlenose dolphin rampant, gazing wistfully across Koombana Bay at a towering pile of woodchips, beneath a banner reading 'Portus et Piscis' (Port and Fish), flanked by two shipping cranes rusting gently in the sea breeze.
TripAdvisor Review
★★★☆☆ 3/5
"Drove down from Perth expecting a sleepy nothing-town and was pleasantly surprised by the Dolphin Discovery Centre, though I did spend half my visit wondering what that industrial smell was from the woodchip mill across the water. The Big Swim area is lovely if you ignore the shipping infrastructure looming in your peripheral vision. Geographe Bay is genuinely stunning and the whale watching in spring is worth the trip alone. Three stars because the town centre shuts down disturbingly early for a place that calls itself a city."— Craig_from_Armadale
Property Listing
Charming coastal lifestyle city just two hours from Perth, offering unparalleled dolphin-adjacent living and a front-row seat to Western Australia's finest woodchip export operations! This up-and-coming regional hub boasts a genuine Big Swim, a mill that hums you to sleep, and property prices that still remember what 'affordable' means.
Twinned With
Fremantle — Both are proud port towns perpetually living in the shadow of a bigger, shinier port town up the coast.
Supporting Evidence
Bunbury's Koombana Bay is home to a resident pod of wild bottlenose dolphins that regularly swim right up to the beach, making it one of the few places in Australia where you can be interrupted mid-swim by an actual dolphin.