Busselton to Margaret River The soap and skincare trail, from goat's milk to olive oil

Two soap makers have stalls inside Origins Market, the all-weather indoor market on West Street, open Thursday to Sunday. Elamoore Natural Soaps makes cold-process soap in small batches and cuts every bar by hand, so each one weighs a little differently, never under 100 g.

There's no palm oil and no fragrance oil in them: the scent comes from essential oils such as cedarwood, sweet orange, rosemary and lemon myrtle. The Castile bar is olive oil and lye and nothing else, left to harden for six weeks before it's sold. The Honeycomb bar has honey and beeswax and no added scent, and the scrubby bars carry crushed walnut shell or coffee grounds.

Capricopia's stall is here too, from a goat and bee farm in the Margaret River region. Its Smudge soap is named after Cath's best milker, whose spare milk started the soap in 2014. The farm's own beeswax goes into candles with cotton wicks, some moulded on honeycomb sheets so the hexagons show.

Corrynne's started in Fremantle in 1995, with soap set in old milk cartons and taken to the local markets. More than 30 years on it's still family-run, and most of the range is made in-house in Dunsborough, in a facility with solar panels. The shop is in town, on Dunn Bay Road.

The ingredients are easy to read: plant oils, nut butters and essential oils. The lavender bar is coconut oil, olive oil, shea butter, cocoa butter and castor oil, scented with lavender essential oil. The vanilla lip balm is set with candelilla wax and sold in a tin that lives happily in a pocket.

Soap still anchors the shelves, in bars and liquid, and around it are bath salts, body brushes, face oils, lip balms, a men's range and soy candles.

Vasse Virgin's original soap factory is a converted machinery shed at the end of a tree-lined drive on Puzey Road, and you'll smell it before you're through the door. You can watch the soap makers at work, and there's a warm-water testing station for trying things at the sink.

It began with Louis and Edwina Scherini making cold-process soap in their own kitchen, with extra virgin olive oil as the base, and that hasn't changed. Teas, clays, flowers, herbs and spices go in for texture and colour, and the scent comes from essential oils and plant extracts. The spearmint and green tea bar sums up the method.

Scent has become a line of its own, with a series of named perfumes. The workshops happen here too, so book ahead.

Margaret River Hemp Co has a store on Bussell Highway. The family-owned business holds industrial hemp grower licence number 32, and its skincare is handmade in Margaret River with Australian cold-pressed hemp seed oil.

Look for the shampoo and conditioner bar, made from hemp seed and olive oil with no bottle at all, and a milky face wash that doesn't foam, in a glass pump bottle. If you bake, there's hemp flour too, milled from the seed cake left once the oil is pressed.

Also on Bussell Highway, Vasse Virgin's Margaret River store carries its full skincare range, with a sink to try things at, in case you skipped Wilyabrup.