A big day in ever respect

 16  April, 41km: Dog Pool to Woolbales 

I left Dog Pool before sunrise and walked into a beautiful dawn. 

The first 20km to Mt Chance, I was flying along very flat sandy paths and forest roads and arrived just after 10am. I climbed up Mt. Chance (not much of a climb - total height above sea level a whooping 159m). Great views of the grassy plains I’ve been walking through pretty much since Northcliffe. But even at the top still no phone reception- I haven’t had reception since Warren hut on Monday! 

The trail crosses through a lot of what looks like (and is described as) swamp and flood plains and the fact that there are lots of board walks and little bridges tells me it may not always be this dry... at the moment, it is dry and there are swamp bottle brush dotting the bush with red pom-poms everywhere. 

The afternoon was less easy walking, another 21km to the next shelter, through more grassland, but also sometimes pretty overgrown swamp that looked like there were snakes lurking everywhere. I didn?t see any though. 

Lots of bird life and lots of kangaroos around. 

I met quite a few people going north, interestingly all women today. 

When I arrived at Woolbales shelter, I met Clive, Bob and Sam - it?s funny, because of the hut trail logbooks, I usually know at least coming from my direction who is going to be there (because of my “double hutting” I catch up with people eventually). And as most people leave some kind of personal comments in the books, I usually not only know their names, ages and where they come from, but also how they have been going over the last few days before meeting them. 

I had been trying to find a phone signal all day (well, really, all week), because I needed to send one really important email - my letter of resignation to Terumo BCT. I knew that I wasn’t going to go back when I started the walk, this was just a timing issue, but still, after 11 years a pretty momentous event. 

It has been interesting to observe how my thoughts changed over the past weeks - I spent the majority of my time(when I wasn?t thinking about food)  during the first 5 or 6 days composing angry emails* to various people at work in and still thinking about issues I really knew weren’t mine any longer. And then it all kind of went quiet and I found myself not thinking about work anymore for days. And feeling like I’m just going to let things go, without the need for angry emails. 

So, no phone signal all week, and none tonight. But thankfully, my camp buddy Clive had Telstra reception and let me hotspot so I could send out my resignation. Wow! 

Before cooking dinner, the four of us walked up the rock behind the campsite and watched the sunset. 

The views were amazing, across Broke Inlet and all the way back across the Pinjarra plains. It was such a nice and peaceful atmosphere and we all just sat there very quiet, spread out across the outcrops, watching the sun set. 

Back at the hut, and while I was having the last of my red wine out of my peanut butter jar to celebrate the momentous day, they told me about their other hiking plans - a group of them, all in their 60s and 70s, do a 12 day self-supported hike in the Pilbara every year! That’s impressive. 

They also shared their chocolate and Amaretto di Soronno out of a plastic bottle with me. 

*NB: i have since posting been asked who I was thinking of in my “angry emails” that I mentioned - rest assured, no one who has access to the blog!!!