117.1 km / 72.8 miles
168,825 steps
It was an early wake up this morning after a rather noisy night. When we set up yesterday afternoon we were pretty convinced of a quiet campground with just us and our neighbouring C2Cer. We were sadly very mistaken – a car pulled up next to us and set up camp in the early evening, making a fire and having music, although this was actually not a problem as it wasn’t disruptive. It was the bigger group that came in later in the night and set up their 4wd’s, swags, fire and loud music and partied throughout the night with no consideration to any one close by – although to be fair they probably thought they had the whole campground to themselves as we were tucked away and with no visible vehicles really (our neighbour with a car was far back) – but inconsiderate wankers none the less. We were up at 6am, and ready to walk past and bang metal pans together – alas, we are better than them and our little metal camp pans weren’t likely to make much noise. So instead, we grumbled to each other for a bit, and got on with drying our tent out and packing our gear up to get an early start on the trail.
We left at 7.50, feeling exhausted but ready to hit our first of two big days of sand walking. Thankfully our packs were lightening and we weren’t having any problems with them and our back’s and knee’s were behaving. After walking through the campground (FYI don’t pick Whalers campground for C2C as its the FURTHEST from the trail) we hit the trail and were greeted with the first 2km being nice and flat – a nice warm up for the morning. We then had a long gradual dirt trail headed up before coming back down where we really got into the burnt out but beautiful Boranup Forest of the South West! (You can find a link to the bushfire from 2021 in the previous blog post that destroyed the forest area surrounding Contos) We had 4.5km of forest walking, on mostly flat ground and nice wide trails. The Karri trees towered over us and were really quite amazing. This is what the beautiful South West region of Margaret River is known and remembered for (side note: Karri trees are the third tallest trees in the world reaching heights of up to 90metres)
After the morning walking through the Boranup Forest undisturbed by roads, paths and people, we started to cross a few 4WD tracks. We got to a T-junction with a “road” where we saw 2 people resting and laying out on their sleeping pads, looking like they were deciding how to conquer the steep uphill section we could see headed west towards the coast. We decided not to stop and keep going – the uphill was steep but thankfully short-lived. Once at the top we took a quick water and snack break before continuing on to Boranup beach with the trail rolling uphill and down, before a nice 2km gradual downhill all the way to the beach – well, apart from the nice steep soft sand dune at the end which we ran down to get onto the beach and to the water!
It was lunch time – and a slightly more “exciting” lunch time than anticipated. We had got our little gas stove out to boil some water for soup – much to our surprise the gas canister decided it was going to leak and the flame got a bit too high and the fire/gas wasn’t stopping when we turned it off. So we kicked it over the sand hoping that would put it out – however the gas/fire was still leaking so we ended up throwing sand at it and covering the whole thing. Thankfully that put it out, and after a bit we unscrewed the stove part from the canister, cleaned the sand out and used our backup canister. The leaked canister was now empty and we would take it with us to dispose of properly in Hamelin Bay. Very glad we had a spare one – soup and crackers for lunch after a cold/windy morning was much appreciated. After lunch we went and put our feet in the water and mentally prepared ourselves for the sand walking ahead.
Now Boranup Beach we were anxiously anticipating to be one of the hardest sections of the whole trail. We knew it was a long sand section (Boranup beach is actually the longest continuous sand beach in the region) and we were doing it with our packs (tomorrow’s sand day was with smaller packs which sounded more manageable).
The walk started well, we tied our shoes to our bags and made sure to shout to each other “BOOT CHECK” and “LIONEL CHECK” every now and then – since my boots had fallen off/not been tied on properly on day 2… we were learning from that mistake! I kept my shoes off for the whole 7km of sand – really enjoying having my bare feet on the sand, whereas Michelle put hers back on after a couple of km’s. The first 3km was hard sand which was nice and we walked that in what seemed like pretty good time. We barely took breaks, keeping our heads down and getting the sand section done. I walked mostly by the water with the harder/wetter sand and Michelle walked a bit further up the beach. The next 2km was harder as the sand grew softer, deeper and more at an angle. We walked up by the dune/grass edge where the 4WDer’s had made tracks which we used to walk in – having to move occasionally to let other 4WD’s past (as they were mostly using the same tracks already made). This 2km went on forever and the wind was getting pretty stingy on the face and neck. I was glad to have my buff! Once we hit 5km we stopped for a snack break – lollies, dried fruit and nuts. We scoffed our snack bags having not taken a break for a couple of hours and were ready to tackle the last 2km.
For the last 2km the beach got wider and the sand got harder again. It was still at a slight angle which was hard on the legs and ankles but we were glad to be out of the soft sand. I walked back by the water and M stayed further up the sand. We could see far up the beach, noticeably spotting the other C2Cer’s. Looks like we actually got a pretty nice day for beach walking, with the tide going out it really helped having those harder sand sections. We were making good time and so was everyone else. As we got closer to Hamelin Bay the beach was busier with people. We could see the jetty and the boat ramp which we knew was our ending point of the sand walking and pretty much the entrance to the campground. Hamelin Bay was mostly just a giant campground and beach front. The only shop was attached to the campground, which we were very glad to make the opening times for. It was 3pm when we got there and checked in for the night. We got ice creams and chatted with fellow C2Cer’s who were also taking a breather before heading through the campground to the unpowered tent sites. We took note of the shop opening times, to remember to come back before 5 to get some more snacks for dessert later 🙂
At the tent site, we put the tent up, aired our stinky sweaty clothes and got into some warmer clothes. We had nice hot showers, before headed back to the shop to fill up on sugary drinks and snacks and then back to the communal kitchen area to cook up our last dehydrated dinner. We walked back down to the beach for sunset, where we photographed the jetty as the sun was going down. It was nice to sit on the boat ramp and enjoy night falling. We were exhausted and ready for an early night – tomorrow was our last day but our longest day – 25km of walking was ahead of us to reach Cape Leeuwin.
Today wasn’t as hard as we expected. We still couldn’t get over how unexpectedly hard Day 2 was. Maybe because we had mentally prepared for this day to be hard whereas we didn’t for day 2 – the earlier struggles in the hike have appeared to help us further down the hike. Silver linings eh?!
And today’s video: