Coogee Common

The Coogee Hotel has been part of the local landscape since 1894. Built four miles from Fremantle at a spot the Noongar people called Coogee, meaning body of water, it served market gardeners, quarry workers and travellers for generations before falling empty, standing sentinel over Coogee Beach with its best days apparently behind it.

In 2018, that changed. A new owner saw something in the neglected site: the bones of a place that could become meaningful again. The vision was not simply a bar and restaurant, but a working garden that would supply the kitchen, connecting the food on the plate directly to the soil it came from.

The site presented its challenges. Exposed to strong salt-laden winds, sloping considerably across its 7000 square metres, with sandy soil that needed significant work before it could support productive growing. The design embraced these conditions rather than fighting them. The ground was broken into a series of terraces stepping up to a high point, maximising garden bed area throughout. 

Mature trees salvaged from demolition elsewhere were brought in as windbreaks: a 65-year-old fig from Scarborough, olive trees from Gingin, and Shiraz vines from Margaret River. A new arbour marks the point where restaurant meets garden, making the connection between the two immediate and visible.

The garden supplies the kitchen with a steady harvest year-round. Vegetables, herbs and fruit are planted in succession across the beds, beehives provide honey, local bush foods are cultivated, and any surplus is preserved and sold in the farm shop. Nothing goes to waste.