The beach! The beach!

What a difference a day makes! 

17 April, 32km

I got up early, packed up and had breakfast and then made another cup of tea and climbed back up on the rocks to watch the sunrise. 

Yesterday was pretty big and it was nice to watch the sun rise over the plains and very consciously start into a new direction for my life. 

I left the Pingerup plains behind me today and finally made it to the ocean! 

But first, there were about 700 spiderwebs to clear. The spiders set up their webs across the path over night, and I am sure some of them are set up to catch wallabies (or solo female hikers starting early). And the fact that some are red and hairy tells me that they are not friendly... the black ones are orb spiders, I have learned. Not sure about the hairy ones...

 

I kept thinking it should get flatter and downhill as I was getting to the coast, but no... still lots of ups and downs and then finally: Mandalay beach (named after a Dutch ship that sank there in 1917). 

I remember being there when Birger and I first came to WA about 10 years ago, after driving along 10km of unsealed road, being very unsure whether this was a good idea and being rewarded with the most stunning beach. It still is and there was no one around! 

At the end of mandalay beach, the track turns inland and up into the dunes. That was when I understood what people meant when they told me they had underestimated the dunes. Steep. Sandy. So steep that you almost fall backwards down the hill again. And I thought I had heard the guys last night say something about “it’s mostly downhill tomorrow” - I must have misunderstood... the flora has changed, there’s lots of yellow flowering water bush and wild geranium. 

I eventually made it to Light Point. There is a shelter there, but I was only going to top up my water and have lunch at the Point, which is about 1.5km off the main track. The map showed a u-shaped detour, so I dropped my backpack in a bush and took only my water bottle and lunch on a little walk. 

Probably best lunch spot yet! 

When I tried to find my way around the headland, the path pretty quickly disappeared and I found myself bushbashing through very dense bush (looking all a bit ?snakes?) with a steep drp off towards a spectacular but inaccessible beach. I could see huge fish swimming there from above. I eventually decided that bushbashing any further wasn’t going to be very smart and just walked back the way I had come. 

After picking up my backpack, I went on - more dunes, more up and down and a few friendly fellow hikers. One group was doing day trips with a support car and told me they had to detour because their car got bogged on one of the not so accessible access roads. They were very interested in me walking by myself and eventually asked the question that always gives away the experienced hikers: “How are you going food wise??”  When I told them that I was in the “ever hungry caterpillar” stage, they started going through their day packs and gave me a big bag of trail mix and a bag of spicy nuts that will go fantastic with watching the sunset tonight! 

The last part today was up Mt Clare - oh boy... 200m elevation change over about 1.5km. When I got to the top, I could hear loud voices and laughter from the shelter (which I had expected to have to myself, given it is only 10km from Walpole and most people would walk through after overnighting at Light Point): as I turned the corner, there were 4 people there, wine bottles and a cheese platter on the table. It turned out that they were the maintenance volunteers who were spending the weekend looking after the shelter and the surrounding trail section and they had only walked in 20 min from the nearest car park. It was an interesting evening - from Charly who is with the Bibbulmun foundation and who gave me a very stern talk about using the Guthook app instead of paper maps and was very... let’s say “opinionated” on a number of issues, to his sister Dorothy (a 63 year old primary school teacher) who suggested that I should “dump my husband” to make the whole Bibb experience even more life changing than just walking 1000km by myself and resigning from my job (WTF Dorothy????) and two more late arrivals who between them have not only walked the Bibbulmun track over 15 times, but have also done the Camino in Spain 10 (!) times. And then there was a girl who rocked up when it was almost dark because she got lost on the way from Walpole (very difficult in my opinion in general, but specifically on that bit of trail) who had the heaviest looking backpack I have ever seen, and was wearing a winter jacket with fur around the hood, but was using a children?s sleeping bag to save weight. An illustrious collection of people... 

oh, and Charly happened to mention that they regularly find dead rats in the water tanks when they service them - maybe someone should let the Phil guy who was making fun of me for treating my water know. Or not ;-)

My camping spot under huge gum trees. 

Sunset was beautiful again though. 

Oh, and they shared their wine with me ??