White Elephant Cafe

The White Elephant Cafe sits at 1 Gnarabup Road, close enough to the sand that the ocean is part of the experience rather than a view you squint at, and it has been a fixture of this Margaret River coast for years. Gnarabup is the beachside suburb south-west of Margaret River township, and the cafe is where the morning surf crowd and the holiday families end up, coffee in hand, sandy dogs at their feet.

The dog policy is stated plainly on the cafe's own contact page: dogs are welcome in the outdoor seating area on a lead, and are not permitted inside. That is the whole deal, and it is an honest one, because the outdoor area is where everyone wants to be here anyway. Arrive with your dog leashed and settle them under or beside the table; the traffic between beach and tables is constant through summer mornings.

The vibe

This is a beach cafe in the true sense: wooden decks, a menu that runs from breakfast through lunch, and the kind of relaxed service that expects bare feet and wet towels. It gets busy on summer weekends and school holidays, when Gnarabup's holiday houses fill up, so the earliest tables are both the coolest and the calmest for a dog that prefers space. Winter visits have their own charm, with the ocean grey and dramatic and the deck sheltered enough for a long flat white.

Pepsi: Beach, then breakfast, then supervising the humans' second coffee. A complete morning.

Make a day of it

The coastal path south of the cafe links Gnarabup towards Prevelly and the surf breaks at the river mouth, so a leashed pre-breakfast walk along the track sets the day up well. Nearby, the Combi Coffee at Prevelly is the other coffee stop on this stretch, and The Sea Garden Cafe covers the lunch-and-dinner end of the day. For the broader trip, the Brookfield dog park in Margaret River township is the off leash option, and the WA dog-friendly cafes list and Prevelly destination guide round out the planning.