Margaret River Wine & Nature Tours

Margaret River Nature Tours will show you the beautiful natural history of the South West, concentrating on the Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park (Cape to Cape) which coincides with Your Margaret River Wine Region.

Discover the underlying geology that has created the spectacular landforms and ideal soils that produce all the wonderful food and produce that you can enjoy here.

Our ancient geological history has also created incredible diversity in plants and animals. The Nature Tour will bring you to examples of the unique plants of the South West, many with exquisite wildflowers.

The ancient Leeuwin Complex (1.5-0.5Ma) is not as old as the Yilgarn and comprises granitised meta-sediments and gneissic granites. Permian, Jurassic and Cretaceous sediments of the Perth Basin are exposed at a few localities and an Early Cretaceous basalt flow can be seen that heralded the separation of India from Australia. Early Tertiary tropical climates produced a deeply weathered terrane, resulting in thick laterites (gravels) and etching out of joints in the granitic gneisses of the ancient complex. Ice Age sea level changes and desert climates resulted in sand dunes then covering most of the terrain. Those sand dunes closest to the coast were rich in shell fragments that dissolved and re-cemented the dunes into calcarenites. Many spectacular caves then formed in these cemented dunes.

The many different rock types (granites, sandy Mesozoic sediments, laterites and sand dunes) are all very low in nutrients. Their soils are also very poor and mostly very thin. The plants of the Leeuwin-Naturaliste Ridge have had to adapt not only to these poor soils, but rapidly changing climates during the ice ages that went from cold and dry during the maxima to hot summers and wet winters during the inter-glacials, such as now. The nutrient and climate stresses have resulted in one of the major bio-diversity hot spots in the world.