4wd to Walpole

Another relaxed start to the day... We eat breakfast, pack up, leave our Albany cottage. It was good :-)

We drive to Denmark and stop for coffee at the bakery. Also buy a wrap & drinks to go, for lunch. Set off to follow the Mundal 4wd track towards Walpole.

There's a track waypoint at the start of a road and the next wp is on another road. How to get from one to the other ? No explanation in the notes. So we follow the obvious road -- even though it is signposted, No through traffic.

We are on a road through farms. Lots of gates to either side, leading to paddocks and, once, to a gravel pit. The more obvious road takes us to a closed gate... we turn back. Take another track... till we reach an overgrown paddock. It looks as though a farmer could drive through it, we choose to turn back.

It's beautiful country: rolling hills, green, cleared paddocks with some remaining bush. A very nice house in a valley, a road of red beech(?) trees as their driveway.

We drive through this beautiful country and back to the bitumen road. Perhaps we should follow the edge of the national park ?

That road -- gravel, probably intended as a firebreak but an easy drive -- goes between farm & forest. After a few km we finally reach the next waypoint. It's Stan Road. There is a sign, Road closed.

Back to the bitumen. Forget the 4wd track. Deb navigates. There's a racehorse goanna slowly ambling across the road. We slow, stop to watch him get off the road.

The 4wd track shows a loop through Mt Lindesay NP, we turn into the park. It's an easy drive, solid sand, just a few dips and bumps. Three kangaroos hop onto the road, see us, hop across in more of a hurry. We pass the other end of Stan Road, no sign here that the road is closed.

The loop goes to Mt L. itself -- except that when it turns onto Mt L. Road -- the road is closed. Back to the bitumen.

btw: In Albany I said that we had found a cache at the top of Mt Something; I may have named the wrong Mt. Not to worry, true facts have very little influence on my travel journals.

By now we are closer to Denmark (where we started) than Walpole. The road we are on is the Denmark Mt Barker Road. We don't want either town. Deb finds an unsealed road... well, a series on unsealed roads that end up on Nornalup Road. Which does seem to lead to Nornalup. Which is on the highway near Walpole.

There's a emu in a paddock. Then some more... then lots more. Seems to be an emu farm. Is that a collar round each emu neck ?

It's a very nice drive to Nornalup. And it's a great relief to finally reach a highway which is near to our destination. We turn towards Walpole...

... and divert to the Valley of the Giants. We cruise to the main parking area but don't stop, we're not into treetop walks. The trees themselves -- from ground level -- are amazing enough. We don't see any valley. Well worth the detour.

We agree that it's been an excellent day's drive. Pity that we couldn't make sense of the 4wd track notes. Lucky Deb found interesting roads for us to follow.

Finally... we reach Walpole. We're looking for the address of our motel when -- there it is. Right on the highway. Easy :-)

Our room is simple, neat, quite large. As we close the door there is a beep beep beeping from outside. I open the door, the beeping stops. Open, silence. Close, beep beep beep. Finally, it stops. Later, we try again: open... close, beep beep beep, open... Then it stops, silence at last. We decide that it was really cheep, cheep, cheep... a bird, with a call which sounds annoyingly like an alarm going off.

"Town" is a couple of hundred metres down the road, we drive. Buy milk to support our tea & coffee habits. The visitors centre sells second-hand books, I buy one. There's a cache nearby. We look -- briefly. It's somewhere on a "bobtail", a large metal thing used for hauling logs. Too many sharp rusty metal edges for us to search for a small magnetised cache. I note the cache as "LMO" -- large metal object. We never try too hard on an LMO.

We have dinner in the motel restaurant. The waitress is a sweet young thing, new to waitressing, very uncertain, has to come back a couple of times for more information. All part of the enjoyment of the evening.

Coffee in our room. Now we're relaxing. TV, books, crossword & journal. Aaaahhh... just sitting... relaxing :-)

====    Dr Nick Lethbridge  /  Consulting Dexitroboper
Agamedes Consulting / Problems? Solved.
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"Real people don't make very good politicians." … Ginger Meggs
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dying for you to read my blog: notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com.au :-)
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