Fifteen minutes, give or take, is about as long as most people will sit in a car before they start eyeing off the shoulder of the road for somewhere to pull over. Zig Zag Scenic Drive in the Perth Hills is built for exactly that kind of restlessness. It's a narrow, switchbacking road with a handful of lookouts and short trailheads bolted onto it, and not all of them deserve the brake lights.
Why bother stopping at all
I've driven the full length of it three times now, twice for work and once just because I had a Saturday free and no better idea. The honest answer to why you'd stop is that the drive itself is a means to an end — it gets you up into the scarp quickly from the Kalamunda side, and the short walks off it let you actually stand in the bush for ten minutes instead of just looking at it through glass. None of these are Bibbulmun Track distances. If you're after that kind of commitment the Bibbulmun Track Foundation website will sort you out with sections that run for days, not minutes. These are different walks entirely and that's fine, they're not pretending to be something they're not.
Getting there and what the road itself is like
You'll find Zig Zag Scenic Drive off Williams Road or Lascelles Parade depending which end you come in from, and the road surface is sealed but tight — single lane in places with cyclists using it on weekends, so slow down. There's no visitor centre at the top, just a scatter of informal pull-ins and a couple of signed trailheads. I'd pack it the same way I'd pack for any short Perth Hills outing: one water bottle is plenty for anything under 40 minutes, and I wore my usual merino walking socks rather than anything heavier, since none of these tracks are rocky enough to punish your ankles.
The lookout walks that are actually worth the climb
There are two or three spots along the drive where a short, steepish path takes you to a cleared lookout over the Perth coastal plain, and on a clear day you can pick out the city skyline a fair way off. The walk up is five to ten minutes each way, graded easy to moderate, nothing that needs gaiters or poles. I'll admit the view from the first lookout I tried wasn't quite what the photos online suggested — a bit of haze that day, and a powerline cutting through the middle distance that nobody mentions in the write-ups. Still worth the stop. Just don't expect it to look exactly like the Instagram shot.
Lazarus, if you want something with a bit more leg in it
If the short lookout walks leave you wanting more, the Lazarus walk nearby has more sustained climbing and a longer loop, and it's the one I'd point intermediate walkers toward if they've done the Zig Zag stops and still have energy left. It sits a notch above the drive-side detours in both distance and grade, closer to a half-day commitment than a quarter-hour one. I measure most Perth Hills walks against a particular stretch of the Bibbulmun Track I know well between Mundaring and Beraking, and Lazarus is gentler than that section but not by a huge margin.
The Advent Park detour
A short drive or a longer walk connection takes you to Advent Park, which is more picnic ground than wilderness but has enough bushland fringe to make for a decent leg-stretch between the Zig Zag lookouts. It's flat, shaded in parts, and genuinely family-friendly — though I'd say that label gets used a little too loosely on some Perth Hills tracks and this is one of the few spots where it's actually earned. Bring the kids here before you bring them anywhere steeper.
Hudman Road as the quieter alternative
Here's my one gripe with how Zig Zag Scenic Drive gets talked about online: everyone piles in on weekends for the main lookouts, and the car parks fill by mid-morning, but the Hudman Road walk a bit further along gets a fraction of the foot traffic for a comparable bush experience. I did it on a Tuesday and had the whole track to myself bar one guy walking a kelpie. It's not dramatically different scenery, but the solitude changes how a short walk feels, and frankly I'd rather have that than another crowded lookout with someone's drone buzzing overhead.
What I actually carried, and what you probably don't need
For a morning covering three or four of these short stops I had one 750ml water bottle, a light rain shell because the forecast was unreliable, and my phone for the lookout photos. No gaiters, no poles, no second pair of socks. If you're doing the full loop including Lazarus, add a second water bottle and proper trail shoes rather than the sneakers that are fine for the Zig Zag lookouts themselves. The whole exercise doesn't need much kit and that's part of the appeal — you can do four stops in under three hours without touching your pack straps.
Planning the rest of your Perth Hills day
If you want a broader rundown of where else to stop along the drive beyond what I've covered here, the companion piece on Zig Zag Scenic Drive: the short walks worth stopping for has the fuller list with distances for each trailhead. For planning walks further afield in the region, Trails WA keeps a reasonably current database of track conditions, which is handy after the Hills have had a wet week and some of the clay sections turn greasy.
None of these Zig Zag Scenic Drive walks will test you the way a proper day on the Bibbulmun Track will, and they're not meant to. What they're good for is filling a Saturday morning with enough bush and enough view to feel like you've actually gone somewhere, without committing your whole day to it. Pick two or three stops, skip the crowded one if you can, and you'll be back at the car with time to spare.