Certified
All courses distance-certified. The event has hosted the WA State Open and Country Marathon Titles.
Sunday 11 April 2027
Bunbury, Western Australia
45th year
Forty-five years
on the same line.
One certified lap through an inlet, a bay and the Indian Ocean. Run on this coast since 1982. The gun goes at 6:30am, in the dark.
Entries open in
—
Days
—
Hours
—
Minutes
—
Seconds
The course
Three waters.
One lap.
Most marathons give you a city. This one gives you three bodies of water in a single certified lap.
You start in the dark on Ocean Drive and loop Big Swamp before first light. Then north into the Indian Ocean wind along the Back Beach, up to the checkered lighthouse on Marlston Hill and down the zig-zag. Across Whalebone Bridge into Koombana Bay, where the dolphins are and where the noise is. Then the glassy edge of Leschenault Inlet, home. Marathon runners do it all again.
Leschenault Inlet
Flat and glassy at first light. Boardwalk, mangrove reserve, the Dolphin Discovery Centre on the far shore. These are the kilometres where you settle in and stop thinking.
Koombana Bay
Whalebone Bridge, the jetty, the foreshore. The bay holds a resident pod of wild bottlenose dolphins and they do turn up. This is where the crowd is.
Indian Ocean
Back Beach, then the climb to the checkered lighthouse on Marlston Hill and the zig-zag back down off it. Wind off the ocean and the only real hill on the course.
Why people enter
What you actually take home
A cup and a medal
Every finisher gets both. The engraved cup is back for the first time since the medal replaced it in 2011. You’ll think of the “checkered bastard” every time you drink from it.
Enter the 45thThe 45th range
Drawn from the club’s own race shirts, back to 1988. On sale all weekend at the Retail Village.
See forty-five yearsA village, not a car park
Coffee from 5:30. The archive on the walls. Face painters, and a bouncy castle on race day. Somewhere for the people who came to watch you.
Plan the weekendA town that turns up
The marshal on the corner knows the person handing you water. The last finisher gets the loudest crowd of the day.
Pick your raceEnter the 45thThe marathon sold out at 300 last year. This year there are 500 places.
Four races · one morning
Pick your water
The Full Three
42.2 km · MarathonPresented by
All three waters, twice. Two certified laps, 6:30am start, six-hour cut-off. Sold out at 300 last year; 500 places this time.
Details The Three 21.1 km · Half MarathonAll three waters, once. The signature lap and the biggest field of the weekend. If you only run one thing here, run this.
Details The Ocean 10 kmPresented byA lap of Big Swamp, then over the lighthouse hill and down the zig-zag to the Mosaic. Everything the half gives you, in ten kilometres.
Details The Drive 5 kmPresented byOcean Drive, out and back. Walkers welcome. Most people’s first race here.
Details1984 · 2021
Tessa Brockwell ran 2:50:03.
Thirty-seven years later,
Astrid Feyer Roberts ran 2:50:03. Women's marathon record — held jointly, to the second
Forty-five years produces things you cannot plan.
Fourteen people started the first marathon in 1982. Two of them were women, and entry was five dollars. David Eltringham ran 2:24:17 in 1985 and nobody has beaten it since. Runners from Setagaya, Bunbury's sister city in Japan, have been coming for more than thirty years and are still billeted in local homes. In 2021 Dennis Devereaux — who had been organising this race since the late 1980s — became the first wheelchair athlete to finish it, in the rain, on a spare chair, after a puncture.
1982
First run
10,000+
Finishers since
2:24:17
Course record, unbeaten since 1985
1
Year missed in forty-five
The weekend
Come to run.
Stay for the rest.
Bunbury is two hours south of Perth and the race is on a Sunday morning. Make a weekend of it.
Saturday: the shakeout jog from Little Spencer at six, Spoken Streets walking tours from the clubrooms at nine, and the Runners Village and forty-five-year exhibition from ten until four. Sunday: the gun at 6:30 in the dark, presentations at eleven, the course closed at 12:30. Home to Perth before dark — or on to Margaret River, ninety minutes further south.
Aid every 5 km
Water, electrolyte and fuel on the marathon and half, with personal nutrition drop-off at stations one to four.
Run by the club
Organised by the Bunbury Runners Club since 1982. Some of the marshals on course have been there since the eighties.
Members save
Bunbury Runners Club members get 10% off every distance. Membership is open to anyone.