Day 8 Adelaide to Perth - Shannon National Park

---

We awoke from our sleep this morning to a drumming sound on the tin roof of the games room at 6am. Simo got up to investigate and after sone searching inside and out, he found the culprit was a possum who had got himself stuck in the roof. We decided we may as well use that as our wake up call and start packing up our swags as we were going to have to be up at 6.30 anyway. As we were rolling up our swags Will spotted a tiny scorpion who had been hiding under our swags! We showed him to Simo who confirmed that although he wouldn't be deadly he would make you very ill. We were a bit more careful about how we rolled our swags after that! The first stop of the morning was the castle rock walk at the top of perongerup ranges. At the top they had built a metal walkway around the boulders that had formed at the summit, with a mesh flooring which allowed you to see how far you would drop if the structure were to fall!! The next stop today was intended to be a look out point at Albany. However as we drove into Albany the heavens opened and it poured down with rain. So we decided to miss out the lookout point all we would see is grey mist, and we drove on to 'The Gap' and 'The Bridge' these are both cliff formations just outside of Albany. As it was so windy the waves here were spectacular as they crashed against the cliff and the spray raised 30feet in the air. It was still pouring with rain here, so as we climbed back into the van everything was wet! As we couldn't really get any wetter we headed over to another rock formation called 'Elephant Rock' because the rocks look like a herd of Elephants in the water.It was then time to head into Denmark, which Simo informed us has the best coffee of all the places we visit on the tour. So after lunch we had 30mins to wander around the town and try out the infamous coffee. After lunch we went on a tree top walk, we made our way around the walk fairly quickly as it was still damp and cold and we had done a similar walk in the Otway forest when we drive the Great Ocean road. It was then on to camp, it was only a 30minute drive to the intended campsite but it was still raining on and off so we were hoping that the campsite would be quiet and we would be able to use the cabins to sleep for the night rather than having to sleep in the rain with our swags. But as its the Easter weekend we were out of luck and the campsite was busy - so busy that we couldn't even find somewhere to park the bus. After a little deliberation from Simo he decided we would drive towards the next campsite at Shannon and keep a lookout for any areas on the side of the road where we would be able to set up our own little camp. There were a couple of spots that looked promising on the drive to Shannon but on closer inspection Simo decided we would be better just driving to the campsite at Shannon. When we arrived at Shannon it was getting dark and the rain was coming down pretty heavy so it was all hands on deck to erect a few tents and create a dry area at the side of the bus with tarpaulins. It took a lot of teamwork but we eventually had 5 semi dry tents ready for us and we turned our attention back to dinner as we all huddled together in the camp kitchen to stay dry. Tonight our thoughts were back with the UK in memory of Lucy Brown; may you rest in peace Nan.

---