Today promises a longish day, but one that should be relatively easy as it's so flat into Dwellingup. We're looking forward to some fresh food and hopefully we'll be able to fit afternoon tea in before Mass. We're pretty pleased that all our hard work has paid off and that we'll be able to get to Mass tonight! We have so much to be thankful for...

Day 12 Google Earth Track

Chadoora Dwellingup

Sandi wrote:

Big thunder and lighting storm at 4:30pm. Wind and rain plus, plus, so happy to be safe and sound under shelter. Had a great time watching lots of little birds darting around. One that looked like a white breasted robin, another with very fanny tail and a blue and tan capped male wren. Fantastic.

Perry wrote:

Another night like the night before, where the cold and storm drove us to bed early, and after a cold night, woke to a colder, but clear morning.

FUSE is now empty again and the camera is charged up to 3 bars. Lests hope for more consistent sun today -- but if that fails, we can charge from the wall at the caravan park. These mornings we get up and put on ALL our clothes!!

We've been a bit nervous about the gas. I should have bought an indication as to when it was planned to run out (but when I was going to do it I re-thought it and didn't think it was necessary). But we've just made our breakfast tea OK. The same is true for the toothpaste.

Sandi wrote:

We woke at 5am and dozed a bit longer. It was so cold when we got up. We just piled on all our clothes just about. Very glad of hot tea and still gas left. Think Mowberry's idea of lighting with matches a good one. Should save gas. We finally got away at 8:12am. Initial blue skies had become overcast, but no rain and felt very thankful as we set off. Took ages before jackets, hats and thermal jumpers came off. Lovely walking through forests; quite thickly wooded and many little birds. Saw 2 wallabies thunder away. Seemed much more NSW'ish.

Over the walk we saw some wonderfully creative forms in the bush that I've labelled 'Bush Sculptures'. This morning it was a moray eel attacking Sandi!

The Track often reuses previous thoroughfares: railways, roads, other bush tracks and even current roads. Over the walk you get quite used to spotting the particular old formations. This morning we turned onto an old road formation at 4.9, and travelled on that for 400m before a very subtle turn off onto a walk trail again. A current road, Inglehope Road, is used to cross a watercourse, before turning off onto an old vehicle track again.

At 7.3 the Track crosses a broad watercourse, and although there was not a lot of water flowing there was certainly increased moisture!

The Track has many faces, and today we see a completely new one: a disused railway, which we walk for a short distance to cross a swamp before we stop for morning tea amongst a beautiful plantation of Eucalypts.

Sandi wrote:

Absolute treat when we reached railway siding as a few distant toots, P went to toilet and next the sound of distant engine noises had me calling him as I didn't want him to miss seeing the train. He got out just in time and it was splendid. Chatted to a railway person and headed again.

Sandi wrote:

Some speedy walking along the railway track, there were some areas of previous town sites with Freshias in sweetly scented profusion, some lovely pink oxalis and many other bulbs. Saw the rock siding. Crossed the brook with fair bit of water (apparently dry last year).

Glad to have lunch, petrol running a spot low, then on again.

Sandi wrote:

Finally loud speakers could be heard and we knew we must be close. A few threatening clouds went over, but no rain. Finally we arrived and signed into the Information Centre, then into town. Camp store open, so got a spare gas cylinder, a quick suss of shop times and we headed out to camp arriving right on the dot of 2:05pm. P very pleased.

We'd worked out what we'd need to do once we got to town, as we had a bit to do before getting to Mass: organise food parcel, put washing on (which needed to get dry for tomorrow morning): which meant that we weren't left with a lot of clothes, and ended up with us wearing just our wet weather gear around camp and showers whilst the clothes dried.

Sandi wrote:

Food drop all intact. Got on with washing, had worked out that if we put on our rain pants and jackets we could wash everything. It was great, then a really fabulous shower and hair wash. Got the washing under wraps and then headed to down for an afternoon tea at a very nice cafe.

Perry wrote:

Had afternoon tea at a nice cafe -- but the highlight was Mass. Only other person was Terry, a fairly lonely man who wanted to buy us a cup of tea. we didn't, but we said we'd send him a postcard [when we finished].

		Food		Room		Service
Restaurant / Cafe	Total	S	P	S	P	S	P
Dwellingup Cafe	4.0	4	4	5	5	4	4

Sandi wrote:

Then headed to the IGA (Man: what it didn't sell!! Quite bizarre), really enjoyed shopping and put together a menu of scotch fillet, onion, egg, tomato sauce (for me), potato + sour cream & spinach. Figure the BBQ will sort out steak, onion & eggs and microwave the spinach & potato.

Perry wrote:

Shopping for dinner was good fun -> had to get a meal that could be done on a BBQ and microwave only. Also get tomorrow's lunch -> egg + spinach on a roll.

Sandi wrote:

Headed to Mass early, I'll let P describe it, it was pretty nice but I felt a bit sad that no one else came. Funny too doing old English version. Anyway, then Terry chatted a bit, and we headed back to camp and yes the meal was everything we hoped. Have since organised ourselves for bed.

Well, it did seem a long day, I'm writing this in the camp kitchen at Dwellingup Caravan Park on what feels like a reasonably balmy night.

Perry wrote:

Had hopes for Dwellingup like North Bannister -- but all the people!! It was crazy coming back to civilization and realise that nothing had changed: Football was still on the TV, the cafes were still selling food and Mass still not well attended.

Walking back to the caravan site felt extremely odd: so full of people (mostly bike riders who were here to do a 40 or 100 km race). I think we both would have preferred being in the bush: I hope we don't de-civilize ourselves on this walk.

Dinner WAS awesome: steak, eggs, spinach + potato. Great flavour -- eaten whilst other campers watched an Australian Rules game (noisily) -- very odd.

Sandi headed for bed, but I wanted to get as much charging done as possible. The caravan park was totally full (Jarred later said he was not able to get any sort of accommodation in town, so had to go right off-track for the night: if I hadn't booked our tent site months in advance we'd be in the same position!), so was not sure about leaving our gadgets out charging unattended, so didn't; but I was completely exhausted by the time I went to bed.

Perry wrote:

It's just past 10pm now, and I'm sitting up charging batteries. The rain has come in again -- Terry said he thought we were in for some weather (bad) -- so we're feeling very uncertain about the FUSE keeping up. The shower and clean clothes IS really nice. All our clothes are clean and dry too. It'll be like starting again. We've bought an emergency gas cannister (just in case). Sandi's socks (just two) are wearing out (where she gets blisters -> I think this means that her problem is the boots + orthotics).

Seemed a very long day by the end, but I'd charged up just about everything via the wall socket, even the FUSE battery as the charging today had been pretty hopeless: so felt pretty confident heading off tomorrow, even if the weather was going to be inclement as Terry predicted.

	Distance			Time		Hours			Speed
	Section	Daily	Total	Arrive	Depart	H:M	Daily	Total	Km/h	Daily	Total
Chadoora Campsite	0.0				8:12 AM	0:00			0.0
Inglehope Rail Crossing	9.1	9.1	202.7	10:20 AM		2:08	2:08	60.8	4.3	4.3	3.3
Etmilyn Siding	2.0	11.1	204.7	11:10 AM	11:17 AM	0:50	2:58	61.6	2.4	3.7	3.3
Dwellingup	9.7	20.8	214.4	1:39 PM		2:22	5:20	64.0	4.1	3.9	3.4