Animal Encounters in a World of Wind and Waves

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Moving on from Denmark towards Albany on the Bibbulmun Track entails getting either around or across Wilson Inlet first. Unlike each of the other inlets encountered along the Southern Ocean coastline, this crossing can be done neither by wading nor by paddling - unless you have your own canoe or kayak. And so it was that I found myself forking out sixty dollars to the manager of the Blue Wren hostel in Denmark, to drive me all the way around the inlet and drop me off at a boat ramp on the northern shore of the Nullaki Peninsula - about six kilometres from Denmark as the crow flies, but a 45-minute drive by more conventional means. Once there, the final 80km of the Bibbulmun Track stretched out in a generally easterly direction towards Albany, running roughly parallel to the coastline.

After following the southern shoreline of Wilson Inlet for the first six kilometres, the trail turned south and led in less than an hour to Nullaki campsite, where I caught up once again with David the journalist (and prolific haiku writer) from Perth. Soon after leaving the campsite the trail began to climb steadily through thickly-vegetated sand dunes towards the Southern Ocean, with various strategically-placed bench seats offering walkers the opportunity to take a breather while enjoying views that encompassed everything from the vast expanse of Wilson Inlet to the gently serrated profile of the Porongurup Range; and before long also taking in the rocky headlands of Knapp Head and beyond to West Cape Howe, as long lines of swell slowly rolled in from the south to hurl themselves against the shore.

After a 27km day (with just the one tiger snake sighting) I reached the West Cape Howe campsite just after 4pm, to be greeted by not only David but also a strange young man with his dog in tow. What followed next was straight out of a comedy sketch. As David rolled out his sleeping mat and started to inflate it, Dexter Morgan (the dog) immediately wandered over to investigate... before plonking himself down on David's half-inflated mat! Then the moment his owner was distracted the dog proceeded to lick vegemite (that great scourge of Australian cuisine) from the inside of the jar.

Even more entertaining was the man's story. The way he told it he had served a two-and-a-half year stretch in prison for an undisclosed crime, and after being released his weight had ballooned to over 140kg (apparently the food was really good). So for whatever reason he had then started wandering in the wilderness to the west of Albany with his four-legged companion, and had managed to lose over 40kg in just four months. Meanwhile he had begun visiting a Buddhist monk that lived in a temple nearby and received visitors each morning, and had decided to walk all the way through to Kalamunda along the Bibbulmun Track, in the hope of being ordained as a monk at a particular temple in Perth once he got there!

The only thing this story lacked was a female protagonist, and sure enough according to the man he had made it only as far as the very shelter at West Cape Howe campsite that we were by now comfortably ensconced in, where he had fallen in love with a young woman (who was headed in the opposite direction) and proceeded to walk back to Albany with her, before returning to the Track to recommence his pilgrimage. He failed to mention whether or not the relationship had been consummated in the shelter, and we declined to enquire. In any case, the woman in question was headed to Perth (by coach) to attend a twelve-day silent retreat, and the man was now undecided as to whether or not he should hook up with her when he got there or proceed with his plan to be ordained as a monk!

Where exactly Dexter Morgan fit into all of this wasn't clear, but given that pets of any kind are banned from all National Parks - as well as the entirety of the Bibbulmun Track - I could only imagine the man and his trusty companion would have their work cut out trying to avoid the rangers of the various National Parks that the Track passes through. In fact only a short way up ahead the Track passed through an area where unconfirmed sightings of the critically-endangered ground parrot had been reported, and I could only imagine how the authorities would react if they came across a man walking his dog through the area!

By this time we had been joined by two more men who I had passed just as they were setting out from the carpark at Lowlands Beach, only 5km back along the Track. They were shooting footage for what they hoped would be a short film about their experience on the Bibbulmun Track, which itself sounded like a complete shambles. Apparently the older of the two had come up with the idea of half-walking and half-running the entire 1000km length of the Track in just 21 days, but by his own admission had done no research into the viability of his plan - nor any fitness training of any kind - and they had ultimately abandoned the idea on the third day. So they were now cherry-picking the best car-accessible sections of trail to tackle in small day- or overnight walks, to gather enough footage to put together a short film.

At this point the monk-to-be mentioned that he too had been filming his walk (in this case just on his phone) for his YouTube channel, and I couldn't help wondering whether I had stumbled through an invisible portal into some sort of alternate reality! I really shouldn't have been surprised when the young man and his dog packed up and hit the Track to resume their journey... at 1am no less! Whichever rabbit hole I had fallen down, it seemed I would never find my way back to the real world...

With the two-man film crew returning to their car and David pressing on to the Mutton Bird campsite 28km away, it seemed that peace and serenity would be restored the following day, as I continued through the coastal dunes in gloomy weather. For half-an-hour I trudged through a landscape devoid of colour, after a bushfire had swept through the area in 20??. As the trail passed behind the rocky headland of West Cape Howe it turned to the north, before climbing onto the spine of a narrow limestone ridge that offered expansive views over an entirely new stretch of coastline. A short detour off the Track at the bottom of this ridge was a viewpoint overlooking the stunning Shelley Beach, where a pair of timber platforms (launch pads for hang-gliders and paragliders) offered the perfect location for a rest break. As I surveyed the scene before me, a young man proceeded to rig up a makeshift wind sock beside the adjacent platform, and within ten minutes of returning to the Track a pair of billowing parachutes had appeared above the bay.

As the Track wound it's way through the scrub parallel to the shoreline high above Dingo Beach, I passed a snake of indeterminate species sleeping soundly beside the trail, it's six-foot-plus length wound into a series of tight coils. This was my fourth snake sighting of the day, and my tenth since leaving Walpole on the coastal section - quite a contrast to the northern end of the Bibbulmun Track where I'd walked the first 210km on previous trips (at the same time of year) without seeing a single one! As with many of the snakes I had encountered though, it seemed perfectly content to let me pass without feeling the need to move - though I suspect it was still fast asleep as I passed by!

Early in the afternoon I arrived at the Torbay campsite, overlooking the bay of the same name, where after the various comings and goings of the previous night I was relieved to find that I had the entire place to myself. Well, almost. According to many recent reports in the shelter's logbook there was a resident caretaker (apparently named Patrick) living in the vicinity, and sure enough shortly before dusk a Southern brown bandicoot (known locally as a quenda) emerged from the bush and began to sniff its way around the shelter! In almost a year of wilderness adventures I'd encountered a long list of native animals of almost every shape and size, but this was the first bandicoot I had crossed paths with, and a more endearing creature I couldn't hope to find!

About the same size as a small possum and with shiny brown fur, it would run with its front legs but hop with its longer back legs, while using its elongated nose to sniff out any tasty morsels that had been dropped by previous hikers. Judging by the number of times it circled the shelter the foraging must have been excellent, and with each pass it would come progressively closer, until it ended up within about 20cm of my feet! Inspired by the offerings of David the journalist - who had scrawled a 'hut haiku' in the logbook of every hut and town he had passed through on the Track - I was sufficiently moved to leave my own offering in the Torbay logbook:

Patrick the Quenda
came for scraps and stole my heart.
Bandicoot, or thief?

Hitting the trail again on Friday morning for my final full day on the Bibbulmun Track, I was delighted to find a beautiful blue sky suspended above the bay, as I had a pretty full 25km walk through to the Sandpatch campsite to look forward to. After descending to sea level the route ahead followed the beach for the next six kilometres, all the way from the charmingly-named picnic area of Cosy Corner through to the cliff-top viewpoint of Mutton Bird. With an unseasonal easterly wind having sprung up, the western end of the beach was somewhat less 'cosy' than usual, necessitating a short scramble up and around a small rocky headland partway along the beach; while further along came the fourth and final inlet crossing on the Track: Torbay Inlet.

Similar in width to the mouth of Parry Inlet but with low waves to contend with as well, the water came to just above knee-height for a couple of metres, but soon enough I emerged on the other side to resume my walk along the beach. After ninety minutes on the sand I finally reached the far end of the beach, where a long set of wooden steps led up to a viewpoint with a panorama that extended all the way out across the wide blue expanse of Torbay, with a delightful little stretch of translucent water separating the shoreline from a small rocky island nearby. It was one of the most impressive vistas on the entire Track, and I had certainly lucked out with such a glorious sunny day in which to enjoy it.

After stopping for lunch at the Mutton Bird campsite, I'd not been going long when I encountered a pair of magpies (presumably a mother with her fully-grown chick, judging by its mottled feathering) beside the Track. Thus ensued a low-speed chase whereby I would get within five metres of the birds while they were busy looking for insects on the trail, before they flew off ahead and landed back on the trail perhaps fifty metres away. Thirty seconds later the pattern would be repeated, and so on... until finally the mother chose to land on a low bush some distance off the Track and allow me to pass by. But her youngster wasn't so easily dissuaded from its trackside foraging forays, so for a further five minutes I proceeded along the trail with the confident young magpie trotting along in front of me, stopping every so often to pluck another unsuspecting worm from the sandy soil, before hurtling along on foot whenever I closed to within a metre or two! Never have I encountered a bird so determined to remain on foot rather than taking to the air - save for the odd emu or cassowary I suppose - and I could only admire this magpie's stubborn persistence!

With gorgeous colourful heathland and steep cliffs dropping straight into the sea, the views along this section of the Track were nothing short of spectacular; and to add further drama to the scene was the presence of eighteen huge wind turbines standing atop the ridge as part of the Albany and Grasmere Wind Farms. Though neither the 34m-long blades nor the 65m-high pedestals that supported them were as large or imposing as the wind turbines on the Great South West Walk in Victoria, they were still an impressive sight; and the sound of their swooshing blades slicing through the air combined with the thundering of Southern Ocean drums as a thick swell crashed onto the shoreline a hundred metres below made for quite the dramatic soundtrack as I weaved my way between the two for the next couple of hours. Throw in the usual profusion of wildflowers and marauding gangs of cockatoos and the sensory overload was complete!

Late in the day I took a short detour from the Track to check out the first views of Albany from a nearby ridgetop viewpoint, before returning to the clifftop boardwalk and then finally climbing up and over a couple of low ridges to arrive at the Sandpatch campsite, where for the second straight night I would have the shelter to myself (in contrast I'd had only one campsite to myself in the previous month). Unfortunately, though the shelter was oriented to give maximum protection from the prevailing southwesterlies, the winds that had been increasingly buffeting me throughout the afternoon were coming from the exact opposite direction - meaning that for the first time on the Track the wind was blowing straight into the shelter, so that I had nowhere to hide from the constant onslaught!

Having dumped my backpack and all of its contents inside the tent to try to keep it from being blown around (my tent being set up on the raised platform inside the shelter, so that I had no way of pegging it down) I then had the small matter of cooking dinner to worry about. Complicating things was the fact that I had almost run out of gas by this point, so that I could ill-afford to waste any of my precious fuel in the incessant winds. So with the prospect of a half-cooked meal proving to be less than appealing - combined with my desire to have a hot coffee to accompany my traditional energy bar dessert - I decided to forego my favoured dinner of pasta carbonara and instead make do with a gigantic bowl of instant mashed potato! Talk about living the dream.

Having enjoyed another quiet night, the silence was rudely interrupted the following morning when a panting hiker suddenly arrived at the shelter. As I engaged my ear plugs I could only marvel at this person's ability to make a maximum amount of noise without actually having anyone to converse with, while telling myself that whoever it was must surely be stopping in only briefly before moving on - I mean, who the hell hikes for three hours to get to a campsite at 8am in the morning only to then call it quits for the day?!? This guy, as it would turn out. As he proceeded to set up his tent as loudly as possible I could only wander at his motivations. Then along came another, much quiter, hiker who introduced himself and explained that he was only stopping briefly on his way through to the next campsite - both of them were heading in the opposite direction to me - to which Mr. Noisy replied that he had gotten shit-faced at a party in a backpackers hostel in Albany (the same one I had been warned to avoid) the night before, and after waking up at 4am had decided to hike into the Sandpatch campsite to sleep off his hangover. Just my luck!

Only later would I discover that this was the (in)famous Pack Animal (his trail name), who by all reports had been walking the Bibbulmun Track, from one end to the other and back again, more or less continuously for the past ten years. I had overheard him speaking to Tyler while we were at the Colliefields, when he had claimed that if it weren't for the fact that he didn't like the northernmost section of track through the Perth Hills - and therefore often turned around and headed south again when he got to Dwellingup - he would have completed around thirty end-to-end walks. Personally I couldn't think of anything more boring than walking the same trail over and over again - much less a 1000km one - but then, given the conversation I'd overheard him having with the passing hiker, it didn't sound like he had a whole lot else going for him. In fact, based on his ramblings and the fact that he spoke in a dialect that could only be described as 'Bogan English' I had imagined the voice in question belonged to a man in his early twenties... so imagine my surprise when I finally emerged from my tent to find a man with greying hair of about 50!

Skipping breakfast (I had by now run out of both cereal and coffee as well as gas), I nodded a greeting to my hungover companion and hit the Track, determined to knock off the remaining 12km in as little time as possible given the miserable weather. Or rather, I was determined to knock off the first 7km as quickly as possible, for on the outskirts of Albany - and directly across the road from the Track, as it followed the shoreline of Princess Royal Harbour - lay the Limeburners distillery. And what's more, the kitchen was due to open exactly five minutes after my arrival... which did make me wonder whether I had in fact deliberately run out of breakfast ingredients. I guess I'll never know. In any case, within five minutes of walking in the door (I was their first customer of the day) I had a steaming cup of coffee in my hands. Ten minutes later it was replaced with a cold beer. And ten minutes after that my pizza arrived. By the time I left I'd managed to sample three of Limeburners' whiskeys, as well as five gins from their sister distillery in Margaret River, Giniversity.

And what's more, the blanket of grey clouds that had loomed over those first 7km had parted to reveal a beautiful blue sky for the remaining 5km, so with a spring in my step and a second cup of coffee in hand I finally rose from the couch and hit the Track for the final time. Whether my change in mood was the result of a full stomach, the injection of caffeine, the addition of alcohol or simply the improvement in weather I couldn't be sure (I suspect it was all of the above) but that final hour of walking felt like a triumphant march, as seems to be the case with all of my best walking adventures. As I made my way into the centre of Albany to finish my walk at the official Bibbulmun Track southern terminus outside the visitor centre, I could only laugh at the various chance encounters I'd had along the way.

I had encountered dogs named after fictional serial killers, birds who refused to fly, snakes who refused to move, a mild-mannered bandicoot and a poorly-mannered pack animal... and that was all just in the last four days! And even if my arrival in Albany didn't actually represent the end of my Bibbulmun Track journey - that would have to wait until I came back and completed the remaining 200km between Pemberton and Walpole at some point in the future - it certainly seemed as fitting a way as any to bring the curtain down on my year-long trip around Australia. I'd managed to walk over 3000km in all, as well as cycling a further 330km and paddling another 130km; and had probably been one of only a very few people to have made it to every state and territory in Australia in a year when this was infinitely more problematic than usual. And as with all of the best trips, it had only left me wanting more.

But that, I guess, will be a story for another day.

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Photos

Somewhere between Surf and Sky
Passing the Albany Wind Farm, high above the Southern Ocean

Shades of Grey
Rejoining the Bibbulmun Track on the southern shore of Wilson Inlet

Coastal Views
Heading towards the southern shoreline of the Nullaki Peninsula

Secluded Beach
Passing Lowlands Beach

Well-sheltered Campsite
Leaving West Cape Howe campsite on day two

Southern Ocean Swells
Looking back over Bornholm Beach

Quiet Time
Enjoying the solitude at Torbay campsite

Friendly Forager
The resident quenda (Southern brown bandicoot) at Torbay campsite

Beautiful Bay
Looking out over the shiny blue expanse of Torbay

Worth the Climb
Mutton Bird viewpoint, high above Torbay

Low Speed Chase
Chasing magpies (slowly) through the coastal heth on day three

Treading the Timbers
Section of boardwalk beside the Albany Wind Farm

Southern Ocean Silhouette
Looking back along the trail on day three

Wind Trap
Arriving at Sandpatch campsite

Colour amongst the Gloom
Trail through the heathland on day four

Extended Rest Break
Whisky tasting at Limeburners distillery

Almost There...
Back on track under sunny skies

The Finish Line
At the Southern terminus of the Bibbulmun Track in Albany

Aliens from Another Planet
Donkey orchids

Graceful in Green
Twin banksia flowers

Colour and Shape
More banksia flowers, this time with colour

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Wine tasting
A nice break.