Day 2. Yallingup to Moses Rock. 25km

41.1km / 25.5 miles
54,306 steps

First thing first… sausage roll for breakfast! We didn’t sleep the best last night, but it was to be expected since it was the first night in the tent (and the 2nd night ever for both of us together) We headed up to the cafe for 7am open, and ordered a sausage roll, coffee and a bacon and egg roll for Michelle (which took forever – although I think they forgot about our order, which meant it took almost half hour to get our takeaway breakfast) It was a nice walk through the Cave House gardens and we were set for the day. The sausage roll was DELICIOUS! We slowly packed up and were on our way out of the campsite by 9.25 – regretting this late start later in the day as we did not realise how far we’d have to walk or long the day was going to be!

And the general consensus amongst everyone we met today and who we chatted to at various points during our hike… this day, DAY 2 was the UNEXPECTED HARDEST DAY. Do not leave Yallingup at 9.25am, maybe aim to be out on the trail by 8 the latest!

We picked the trail up where we left off at the Yallingup Lagoon. We walked along the road towards the car park for Yallingup beach before the trail becomes a mixture of dirt tracks and short beach sections. We head past Torpedo Rocks lookout and down to the start of Smith’s Beach, which was a short beach walk on hard sand then up on the rocks for a bit before heading down again onto the main beach stretch – after a few minutes we followed the detour off the sand for a few hundred metres as the water was up to the rocks and there had been erosion on the cliffs – this was an overgrown uphill and around section that wasn’t pleasant, but thankfully not too long and we were back onto the beach for about 1km stretch of hard packed sand walking – a nice ease into the beach walking practice that we were lacking. We crossed a small water/stream section on the beach where we opted to take our boots off, and continued to the end of the beach which was going to be our coffee/snack break… and little did we know it was going to be the time we realised my boots (that Michelle had kindly tied to my backpack some 500m ago) had fallen off where we tied them on… so Michelle went for some extra sand walking practice to pick them up, and I had coffee 🙂

Our next rest point was going to be Canal Rocks (a place we had visited before but wanted to take the side trip again to “see everything”) The walk between Smith’s Beach and Canal Rocks was one of our favourite parts, lots of amazing views of the ocean, wildflowers and hiking down and up rocks and seeing some cool rock formations. The side trip to Canal Rocks was longer than expected, we left our bags on the side of the trail and headed down. We went on the bridge and then hiked up to get a bird’s eye view – we later regretted this extra 1-2km total the detour took us.

After Canal Rocks we headed up steps and ladders and what felt like forever uphills until we got to Injidup Spa which is a slight detour to the “spa” location where the ocean comes over rocks to make a nice rock pool you can “spa” in and get some cool photos. It was surprisingly busy, so we snapped a quick photo and then went up the rocks to find a shaded spot to have some soup for lunch! (We have been here before on a quiet winters day – so I’ll include a photo from then to show what its like there)

From Injidup Spa we head around the corner to Injidup Beach… our first experience of dune walking and real soft sand beach walking. We had done almost 10km before hitting the beach and were already feeling fatigued. This stretch of about 2.5km was hard and took us just over an hour. At the end of Injidup beach we headed up some steps to the toilet in the car park and to have a quick snack break before headed back down to join the trail and to be hit with a lot of sand dune walking and rocky paths. We had mentally prepared for beach walking… but had not prepared for loose sand/dirt paths carved into the back of the sand dunes. It was a lot of up and downs and uneven ground. The views were still incredible but we were physically drained and tired – we were ready to get to the campground. But we had a way to go, and with one more viewpoint I was keen to seen ‘Quinninup Falls” which was in about 6.5km we knew we had to get moving to make it to the campsite by sunset.

Considering there’s only 3 photos taken in this 6.5km section shows how we were just focused on the trail and getting this section done (and these photos were taken on the rest stop in the middle.)

We arrived at the Quinninup Falls “junction” just before 5pm and it was a 300m detour from the beach – and almost a welcome break. I took my shoes and socks off and opted to walk bare foot. It was a soft sand path with quite a steep dune down. We got down to the falls and was happy to see it still flowing – it was pretty cool and I can only imagine how much cooler it would have been a month or so ago. We sat for a while and rested, and then collected water just down stream – picking up an extra bottle for a hiker who was just behind us who we had met on day 1 (actually, briefly in the taxi ride at the start) as she seemed to be struggling today, and we knew she was running low on water. Thankfully we met her back at the trail head, which she had got slightly lost trying to get to. She wasn’t keen on taking the detour but we gave her some water and we checked the map to see that we were just 4km from the campsite and we checked out the path the get there. We had Moses Rock “surf point” car point in 1km then 3km to the campsite. I think I can speak for most that day… those last 3km from the car park to the campsite seemed to last forever – the ground was loose dirt so harder to walk on, we were exhausted, and the campsite seemed to be moving further and further away.

The sun was going down and we were about 1km away when we decided to stop, drop our packs and actually take in the sunset. It was nice to be able to soak it in, and appreciate a stunning sunset over the ocean before carrying on to the campsite. We were barely looking up from the path and just focusing on getting ourselves that last 1km and thankfully BAM, there’s a campground. We made it to Moses Rock – shattered but with a bit of light left in the day to get the tent up, the washing line hung for our sweaty clothes, refilling the water bottle from a very slow dripping water tank, and we had the pleasure of meeting the little quendas (who thankfully didn’t scurry around much in the night or steal any of our snacks). We were too tired to get the stove out and make dinner so we ate the rest of our snacks bags and a ton of salty crackers…. mmmm. Tomorrow is suppose to be easier…. 🙂

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better”

Albert Einstein