It is an erect, bushy shrub with densely cottony-hairy branchlets, aromatic, linear to narrowly elliptic or narrowly lance-shaped to egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base and small white and yellow, daisy-like inflorescences.

The leaves are arranged alternately along the branchlets and are aromatic, linear to narrowly elliptic or narrowly lance-shaped to egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, 4–40 mm (0.16–1.57 in) long, 1–6 mm (0.039–0.236 in) wide and more or less sessile.

The heads or daisy-like "flowers" are arranged singly in leaf axils or on the ends of short side branchlets and are 5–10 mm (0.20–0.39 in) in diameter and more or less sessile, with five or six rows of bracts forming an involucre 3.5–5 mm (0.14–0.20 in) long at the base.

[2][3][4][5][6] Coastal daisy-bush was first formally described in 1836 by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle who gave it the name Eurybia axillaris in Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis.

[7][8] In 1865, Ferdinand von Mueller changed the name to Aster axillaris in Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae[9][10] and in 1867 George Bentham changed that name to Olearia axillaris in Flora Australiensis.