Day 13: What’s between Yabberup and Noggerup? Mumballup

5 April, 38km

After a woeful night’s sleep (not sure if it was because of the big city (Collie, population 7528), the extended screen time to post all my blog updates or my itchy skin that made me worry about bed bugs), I got up before 6, had another hot shower, breakfast and left town just before 7am. 

I cut across to save myself the 3km extra on the spur track. The light was beautiful and the walk much nicer than I expected after listening to a podcast where they ripped this section apart. 

I walked past 2 dams with very low water levels - everything is so dry. 

I got to Yabberub campsite around 11 for an early lunch break, and had a nice chat to the volunteer who was doing trail maintenance work there. 

After a luxurious lunch of wrap with sundried tomatoes, feta, rehydrated hummus and some green leaves, I took off towards the Mumballup pub, where Michelle from the hotel was going to meet me to deliver my resupply box that I couldn?t get from the tourist information office yesterday. I was supposed to call her when I got to a certain road crossing, but unfortunately had no reception all afternoon. I kept trying and in the end sent her a Garmin message. 

She was nowhere in sight when I got to the (closed) pub, so I just plonked myself on the front porch with a muesli bar and waited (as I still didn?t have phone reception). Half an hour later, just as I started contemplating to leave, Michelle rocked up with my box at this pub at an intersection in the middle of nowhere (well, actually, between Yabberup and Noggerup) - what a lovely thing to do for a random hotel guest and total stranger! 

I?m glad I didn?t know about the next bit beforehand - about 5km uphill slog on a dusty red country road. I then turned into a national park (forgot the name) and another hour later made it to Noggerup. 

When I got to the campsite, I met my company for the evening- a dad with three kids, 3 (!), 5 and 7 years old. The kids were collecting fire wood by themselves and then set up the campfire by themselves- meanwhile, Dad was setting up camp. They were out for 3 days - what a cool thing to do! The other two were brother (in his 20s) and sister (in her 30s) who were actually walking for 3 weeks with their mum (in her 50s) (mum was just taking a couple of days off for her blisters to heal) - what an amazing family to be able to do something like this together!