Another excellent nights sleep in the quiet little piece of Dunsborough suburbia that we were camping in. We were however up early enough to see Riley catch the bus to school with the routine of Marley (the dog) doing a quick check in and out of the bus prior to its departure. Chris gave us some good advice about what to look at down the coast and we also got to know Chris’s family (Ros and Barry) who had come for a visit. Prior to leaving we did the required food and fuel shop and then by about 1130 we were off heading south along Caves Road towards Augusta.
Caves Road is so named due to all the limestone caves that exist along the route, predominantly further south. Our interest however was in the forest, coastline and the various small settlements that exist. In our minds we had always had the vision that due to this part of the island being in the extreme south west that it would be wild and undeveloped but due to its close proximity to Perth it is in fact the opposite. There are numerous towns dotted along the coast with significant housing, many of which are holiday homes. Surfing is a big attraction with a multitude of excellent breaks all down the coast. The scenery along Caves Rd is awesome with large areas of mature forest and wineries for Africa dotted along the road.
Our first stop after leaving Dunsborough was Yallingup and then Prevelly. Both very nice well developed beach areas. With such little distance to cover to get to our stop for the night it was not long before we had arrived at Leeuwin National Park and Conto Camp. An excellent but quite compact area in amongst the forest and quite close to the beach with a few sites big enough to house the van and Beast. The ranger did his rounds collecting fees later in the day and advised that Bandicoots live in the park – something we have never seen before so a Bandicoot hunt was added to our list of to-dos while there.
We took advantage of the good weather and had a barbeque dinner ever watchful for the brush tailed possums that are supposed to inhabit the park (same model as the pesky ones back home) but none showed up. After a really lazy start to the day on Friday we took ourselves off on a tiki tour of the coast and then a very long walk through the lovely forest and only got lost once. Luckily we stumbled across this guy out tramping the cape to cape walk (some 140km) and he pointed us back in the right direction. Our other excitement was almost standing on a snake that was snoozing on the track – scared the shit out of both of us when it wiggled out of the way. We seem to be seeing a lot of these things lately… At dusk we went for our Bandicoot hunt but did not see any, just lots of rabbits and a few kangaroos.
