Dookanelly to Kalamunda
A late departure this morning, everything was soaked, not only soaked but the splash of the rain had covered everything with sand as well. Vestibules are not a safe place to store things unless the fly is cinched right down to the ground. Under my sleeping mat was also very wet guess I’ve got a leak in the floor though I’m not sure where or how. Still I remained dry in my bed and was today warm under my quilt even though it was only something like 4 degrees.
Northcliffe to Dookanelly
Up at 5.30 ready to high tail it into Northcliffe. The rain held off for the morning and leaving at 7 I made it into town well before 12. The track had minor ups and downs and was a bit sandy in places. It also gets very confusing when you get near the main road and you need to walk along the edge for a couple of sections. Still made it into town and signed off at the visitor center before heading off to the hotel, not open till 3.00, oh well. Walking back through town I found Ross, we went back to the visitor center to a lovely spot on the back verandah with chairs and tables and a lawn area, I grabbed out my tent and laid it in the sun.
Albany to Northcliffe
You might be wondering what a Yoyo hike is, it’s doing a hike all the way in one direction then turning around and walking back again, up then down. So I’m off, over 2000km to walk carrying everything I need for the trip, over 3 and a half months of walking. Leaving Albany on a short and easy day to sand patch hut only 13 km or so, arriving three hours later, way too early at about 1pm I’m tempted to keep walking all the way through to the next hut at mutton bird but it’s another 13 km and the rain is coming down so I decide to stay.
A big part of any Bibbulmun hike is food and there are a few ways to go about it. Many like to buy their food in towns along the way and are happy to do this for the whole hike. Personally I’ll be doing this for most sections when it’s only a three or four days between towns, but the majority of my food is pre-organized, pre-packed and dropped into visitor centres, accommodation in towns or in buckets along the track.
Time to do it again. The property where I’ve been staying off and on between traveling has been sold so it’s time to move on but I figure before I go I’ll have another crack at the Bibbulmun track, only this time I’m setting off planning to do it both ways, walking from Albany up to Perth and then walking back down to Albany, over 2000km all up and I’m estimating that it will take me about 4 months to complete. The picture above shows everything I’ll have with me except for my food, not a lot, but it’s a telling image when you think that this is really all you need to live for quite an extended period of time.
You may be wondering what this is, it’s a flying duck orchid of the Paracaleana genus of orchids which rely on mimicking wasp species for fertilization. The big warty “head” of this duck orchid looks like the female of a wasp species, an unsuspecting male wasp flies down and tries to literally pick up what he believes to be a female, the warty head flicks around swinging him under to the business part of the flower, to pollinate it or collect pollen to spread to the next flower he tries to “pick up”.
Fossicking for anything other than gold within Western Australia is a bit of an oddity, something you rarely hear about, especially in the lower half of the state. In fact I’d passed over the idea of fossicking for rocks and minerals here almost completely, but while visiting friends in Kalbarri we went for a look at some old lead mining areas near by and we found some lovely samples of lead and different forms of copper.
I’ve been tumbling rocks constantly for the last few months since I bought the tumbling kit. After years of collecting rocks while travelling around the country, it’s great to finally be able to see some of them at their best, polished and shining. These ones above were from Tassie along the north coast where there are a couple of fossicking areas, I believe most of them are jasper, though there’s some agate in there and petrified wood as well.
Taking photographs is one of the ways to keep myself amused while the lock down is still on, although it’s slowly letting up with W.A. opening some of it’s internal travel restrictions. Just outside of the cottage where I’m staying there’s a birdbath that’s proving to be a great joy with a wide variety of birds visiting it through the day.
Obviously social distancing rules don’t apply to everyone, that’s one crowded bath. So how hard is it when your living a “van life” to suddenly be required to lock down and not go anywhere? A large part of life in a van tends to consist of using public spaces and places so to have these taken away puts you in a bit of a pickle.