TripRoundUnder

I’m sure you have all been worried sick about Steve’s drone controller situation and don’t worry, so was he, but we have good news! Driving, two days into our time in Albany, we got a phone call from a truck driver who had found the controller on the side of the road. Even better, it was still in good shape, with only a small crack in the screen to show for its rough adventure. Great news!

Back to the main adventure. We left Esperance and started our way west, first stop, Bremer Bay. This was exciting as we skipped Bremer Bay our last lap and had heard good things about the little coastal town.

We had planned to hopefully cross the creek that runs through town to get to a campground on the other side. Unfortunately, the creek was a lot more like a river and even at low tide, it was at least a metre deep. With it being salt water and not exactly keen to wreck or turn the car into a submarine, we had to make new plans.

While waiting, we checked out the river mouth beach and found what we believe is the clearest and bluest water in Australia! You wouldn’t believe that this is still a river!

After doing some research, we decided on checking out a free camp about 15 minutes out of town, Dillon Beach. This ended up being one of the camps with the most mixed feelings of our trip so far and our re-introduction to our hatred of march flies.

Finding a campsite was our first challenge as there were many sites all along the bay, stretching 5km of rough 4×4 tracks. Our first plan was to head to the right side of the bay, a mistake as we had to navigate some very rocky terrain while towing the boat. Lauren was not very impressed with this and after reaching one seriously steep drop, we decided to turn around and search the other side of the bay. Instead of rocks, we now found sand, a much better obstacle and we soon found an appropriate site behind the dunes, a great call as it was meant to be very windy over the next few days.

Settling in, we spent a few days relaxing (albeit getting driven a little crazy by march flies) and exploring the length of the beach both going for runs and walks and also driving down to a delightful little spot right at the corner of the beach.

Steve also put his camera to good use and managed to capture both the troopy pic above and also some pretty cool shots of the sand dunes.

After the march flies finally became too much for us, we decided that it was time to be on our way and we made plans to meet up with another travelling couple we had met in Esperance and camp with them for a few days around Albany and Denmark.

Before leaving Bremer Bay entirely, we did manage to have another brief tinnie outing before we realised that it was a little too rough to be comfortable and came back in. Steve was still keen to go for a spearfish/dive so we headed to a nearby bay and he went for a swim and even though didn’t bring any dinner home, it was still a cool dive. We did however run into a problem that has been a little bit of an issue on our trip so far, flushing the boat motor/washing the salt off. Most boat ramps and towns in WA do not have taps or hoses to wash your boat and neither do most campsites. This kind of makes sense as it gets pretty dry in summer, but you can see our problem as salt build up can mean big problems for boat motors and trailers. After spending more than an hour looking, we realised that there was no free taps in Bremer Bay and we had to make do with the quickest possible guilty clean at a random town just off the highway at their toilet dump.

After a few hours drive and no police sirens following us, we made it to Albany. A little controversial, but we actually think Albany/Denmark is just as good as Esperance in a lot of ways and we could definitely see ourselves living here if it didn’t get so cold in winter!

After a restock of supplies we headed out to meet our friends at one of our favourite beaches in Australia, Lowlands Beach. We had a wonderful time here on our last lap, but today the weather and sea gods were not on our side and we were greeted by massive swell and wind. After quickly deciding a beach day was not on the cards, we abandoned the mission and due to the big swell had to scale a cliff to get back to the car or risk getting swamped by a wave. Nice introduction for our friends Nathan and Chloe, we promise its actually a really nice beach. Alf didn’t seem to mind, any beach in any weather is great to him!

We decided to find a nice campground to hide from the wind and made our way to a campsite we visited last lap, Cosy Corner. This ended up being a great decision as it lived up to its name and we managed to relax and even get a run along the beach in the next morning.

Next stop was Denmark and we were keen to check out Greens Pool and Elephant Rock, another couple of favourites from our last trip. Due to it being National Park, this was a tag teamed mission as Steve went for a fish first and then swapped with Lauren for her to go for a little dip. No keeper fish were caught, but it was still a pretty cool spot to visit.

Due to financial pressures, we were keen for a free camp for the night and were lucky enough to stumble on a really cool spot on the river just outside Denmark. Still staying with our mates, we had an awesome steak dinner and continued their education on some of the card games that we play. Lauren as usual was pretty successful!

We even managed to convince them to join in with a morning workout, much to Nathan’s “delight”.

After all this work, we decided that it was time to stay somewhere with a proper shower and to get somewhere organised for the WA long weekend. We decided that Parry Beach campground on the other side of Denmark was going to be our best bet. We must not have smelled too bad as Nathan and Chloe decided to join us.

With the wind starting to die off, Steve managed to get a shore dive in around the rocky headland before the sun started to go down and we both savoured our first, albeit not exactly ‘hot’ shower in a few days.

The next morning the wind had really died down and we managed another successful beach launch with Nathan as Steve’s deck hand. Unfortunately, he quickly became quite seasick and was replaced by Lauren and Alf for fishing adventures.

With Steve acting as fish handler, bait replacer and chief knot rigger, Lauren cleaned up on tommie roughs and sand whiting and we felt like proper hunter gatherers bringing dinner home for camp.

The next day, we ventured back into Denmark for the morning Parkrun and Steve managed to record a new personal best for the 5k!

It wouldn’t have been us if we didn’t stay in town after our run to sample some of the local cafe goodies and we even managed to do a couple of loads of washing as we were starting to run low on clean Steve shirts. Slightly ironic, it actually started to rain as soon as we brought the clothes out from the dryer into the car.

After spending the next day bunkering down as WA’s winds reared their heads again, we decided to head back into Denmark and go for a longer run on the park run trail we had been down on Saturday. This was Chloe’s longest run ever and definitely a big milestone that earned another cafe treat for everyone.

It was time to say goodbye to our friends as they kept on heading West and it was a little weird as we had gotten used to having company at camp. I know Alf was very upset about missing out on the extra cuddles he had been receiving.

We decided to head back to Albany and go to a campground we had skipped on our way West, East Bay campground. Before leaving Denmark we went for a bush walk through some of karri forest that surrounds the town and even better it was dog friendly. It was pretty awe inspiring to see some of the huge trees along the walk and it was good to get into nature after spending so much time on the coast.

From there, we decided to take the scenic inland route however and take up our un-offical duties as meat pie tasters and check out one of the most awarded bakeries in WA, Mt Barker Country Bakery. Because it would have been rude not to, we bought 3 pies and 2 desserts and they scored a very solid 8.5/10 overall. We also managed a wine tasting while in town and the lady taking us for the tasting was very generous with her pours.

Making our way to East Bay, we unfortunately found the two campgrounds full without another option close by. With limited internet, we had a look on google maps and found what looked like camping spots on a sand track just up from the main campground. We decided to go have a look and ended up finding one of our favourite free camps in Australia.

The un-offical campground had a small path leading down to our own private beach which Alfie immediately took a liking to.

Another troopy couple camped up around the corner and the next morning they offered to go for a spearfish with Steve, which he eagerly agreed to as it’s always a good idea not dive with other people. It ended up being a great decision as there was so much fish life in the bay and even though we didn’t shoot a fish, it was still a great dive.

The next morning Steve went for another dive and this time he managed to secure dinner and a fish tail for Alf to snack on. To cap off a great food day, Lauren even managed to keep her culinary miracles going and we had an awesome pizza for lunch. Although it was an awesome spot, we did not have a great nights sleep, as other campers decided it would be great night to go fishing at midnight, much to Alf’s dislike and guard dog instincts as they walked past our camp.

After another delay of relaxation, we decided that we did not want another night of interrupted sleep and our time in the Albany area was at an end. Time to head West and make our way to Margaret River!