When I left Walpole I knew I was in for a treat. Between Walpole and Denmark the trail passes a lot of tingle trees, strange big trees with a buttressed base and often hollow inside so you can see right through the trunk. In fact they only grow here.
As I came towards the tingle forest I arrived at a hilltop lookout over the ocean. A family was standing there, cameras poised, as I emerged from the forest. I hadn’t realised I was a celebrity! Further along I met 2 women coming towards me who were hiking the trail at the same speed as I was; this was unusual as most people aim to finish in 50 to 60 days, not in under 40, and both they and I were pleased to hear our intentions. They told me about a coffee cart by the Treetop Walk, and also not to look forward to the fish and chips at Peaceful Bay as it wasn’t so good. The coffee cart was welcome news to me but I was sorry to hear about the fish and chips as it has legendary status among Bibb hikers and I had been looking forward to it since before Collie.
The karri and tingle continued, truly great specimens, and also the Frankland River. In the early afternoon I got to the coffee cart and had my latte and cookie. 5 minutes later he closed up. I asked if he always closed that early and he said he was closing for good as he had so few customers. I told him I would have been distraught to arrive here and find no coffee cart after having been told about it and looking forward to it all day. I wondered how many hikers would be told about the coffee cart by the women only to arrive and find it gone.
The next day brought more huge trees and then I crossed a dirt road and suddenly I was done with forest. All finished. It was all coastal heath and sparse stunted trees from now on. The trail undulated on sand and I came to the coast, this time for good. The first beach was Conspicuous Beach with high dunes and a view of Rame Head, which I was about to climb.
It was incredibly windy up on top and the shelter was built to avoid the wind so it avoided the view too. The coastal shelters were mostly like this, unfortunately. I crossed several beaches and often walked close to the water. Nice.
When I got to Peaceful Bay I set up my tent at the caravan park and went to sample the fish and chips. The shop closed at 5pm and it was already 4pm so I had dinner right away. I had kingfish and chips and I thought it was great. So good that I quickly ordered another serving before they closed. I’ve never had 2 dinners before 5pm before. It was unbelievably windy in the night, huge gusts.
I got up at 6am and as daylight came the sky looked like it was on fire. I was worried about the wind but I seemed to be sheltered where I walked. I had a day of fabulous coastal walking. I had to cross the first of the 4 inlets that can be problematic but this one had such a wide sandbar that it was hard to believe it wasn’t always there. I walked 5 kilometres along Quarram Beach, which I loved, then lost the trail and did some bush bashing. At one point I fell and it was difficult to get up again with the pack on my back. Quite funny. I barely noticed the second inlet I had to cross.
I intended to stay at Boat Harbour shelter and I unpacked everything when I got there, but it had no view and the mozzies were awful so I packed up and left. I went on along the coast to Parry Beach. There was supposed to be a Bibb shelter there but all I found was a commercial campsite, although a nice bush setting just behind the beach. The deal was that Bibb hikers could stay there for free, and even better the ranger told me there was a shelter I could use. He was very complimentary of my hiking efforts. It had just started to rain and I was glad of the shelter when the rain became heavy in the night.
From Parry Beach I had the longest stretch of beach walking, 7 kilometres on Mezzalotti Beach. It looked like the start of a beautiful day and I enjoyed walking to the sound of the surf. Oyster catchers stood at the water's edge.
I stopped a while at William Bay shelter to work out how I would get across the inlet at Denmark, which is the largest. The Bibb officially goes straight across the inlet. When the trail was created they must have expected everyone to go across by boat. This is actually ridiculous as the inlet is not always navigable due to low water levels. I knew there was a backpackers in Denmark whose owner would drive you around the inlet (26 km) if you stay there and I phoned, standing on the picnic table to get a signal. The guy was in Perth and couldn’t help me. This turned out to be very lucky for me. I next phoned a B & B to ask if they could take me and the woman said Oh you can walk across. What many hikers do is take the WIlderness Trail towards Denmark and turn off at the sandbar to walk across and rejoin the Bibbulmun. I couldn’t do this because I didn’t have enough food to last me if I didn’t go into Denmark but I was so grateful for the info about the sandbar. I wanted to hike the whole of the Bibb. It was a coming together of 2 strands of luck.
And I finally saw snakes, one and then another, big black ones that had noticed me before I noticed them. And I saw some whales.
The rest of the day involved climbing over Mt Hallowell. Remember how the day looked like it would be perfect? By lunchtime there were dark clouds and as I started my ascent of Mt Hallowell it started to pour. Only my second time of hiking in rain on the Bibb. I put on my rain pants and stowed my gear. The rain was heavy and at one stage I tried to shelter under a boulder but the boulder itself was dripping so much I was getting wetter faster. The top of the mountain is all about the view but I saw nothing. It seemed a long climb and an even longer descent and I had to keep checking my GPS to see I wasn’t walking around in circles. All I could see were boulders and undergrowth. I couldn’t look up towards the rain, so of course I eventually banged my head on a branch.
When I got back down I had a long and boring walk into Denmark along the inlet. I finally got to the bridge across the river on the edge of Denmark and saw a caravan park which advertised that it took hikers across the inlet. At this stage I still needed confirmation that there really is a sandbar. So I went into the office and asked about boats. They said I could walk and that no boats could get across. I would have camped there but the lure of a motel room was too great.
I continued the last kilometre into Denmark and got a motel room at the pub. My clothes were all wet so I had no choice but to put them back on, wet, after my shower. I had a quick cafe visit - 2 cakes and a latte - and went to buy food. I had a schnitzel at the pub for dinner; the pub was empty and all of Denmark seemed unusually dead for a Friday.
I had to retrace 9 kilometres of yesterday’s walk to get to the sandbar, all the time apprehensive about whether I could really walk across. I had received so much disinformation over the weeks. What was great was that I could enjoy the scenery I had missed yesterday, and the inlet path was very pretty. Rain had been forecast but I was walking in sunshine. As I got close to the sandbar I could see a couple of people walking on it. My spirits soared.
I walked across the sandbar and saw that right from the other side there were Bibb signs. There was a feint trail across the grass and some beach walking. The shoreline was full of pelicans, spoonbills and black swans. By the time I got to the pontoon where the boat notionally docks I had done an extra 16 kilometres. There was a big picnic area so I stopped for coffee.
It felt like another world over there in the Nullaki Wilderness, very remote. I thought of the contrast between this exceedingly quiet Saturday and my Saturday 4 weeks ago when I had stopped at Monadnocks shelter and it was so busy I couldn’t even get a seat. I had not seen a hiker for many days.
I was quite tired when I got to the shelter. It started raining and was again very windy. I slept in the shelter and that was a good decision because there was a thunderstorm in the night.
The rest of the hike I had off and on rain, but it was never heavy for long. I saw several rainbows. This was coastal walking at its finest with beautiful white sand beaches, dunes, cliffs and colourful heathland. Mostly I was on hilltops. There would be sudden coastal views, a dramatic grey sky and a very rough ocean. But it was not warm. I realised I had been wearing my beanie for about 48 hours straight. Yes, I slept in it.
I was planning to split the final 36 kilometres into 2 days so that I could get into Albany early in the day and have a whole day to revel in my achievement. But the weather wasn’t going to improve and there was no shelter, only a campsite at the place where I would spend my final night; maybe not advisable to have to camp if there could be another storm. Late on Sunday afternoon I decided that I would finish the next day. Having decided that I was so excited I had difficulty sleeping.
I got up well before daylight so I could set out at first light. In the end I left Torbay shelter at 6.45am while it was still dark. I had to cross the Torbay inlet and ironically I got wet feet crossing a channel that wasn’t the inlet while the inlet could be crossed on another wide sandbar. Just before the next shelter I met a Bibb hiker (my first hiker in 6 days) who was on his second day of the trail. Not only had he met Chippy but his wife had given her a ride back to Perth. Small world. I stopped at Muttonbird shelter for coffee and 2 sandwiches; I was carrying far more food than I now needed. I powered on towards Sandpatch past the wind turbines and came to an area that had been badly burned fairly recently. This meant that the final kilometres of the trail were not so special.
At 1pm I was high up and could see Albany in the distance. Exciting! I reckoned I had 2 hours to go. I still managed to take a wrong turn. That was a slow 2 hours as I wound around the bay, climbed another hill behind Albany and came into town. In the town the trail markers were poor and frustrating as I wanted to be done. Finally I reach the southern terminus, by the railway station, at 3.08pm. It was about the most inauspicious spot anyone could have selected. Even after all that effort I still had to walk a kilometre to the visitor centre to ring the Bibbulmun bell and sign the register.
And then it was all over. 34 days and 997 kilometres according to my watch. Of course I walked quite a bit more messing around in the towns and forgetting to turn on my watch and setting out before having an arrangement with the satellites. It is often a strange feeling, or rather an absence of feelings, to finish something big, and this was no exception.
Daily distances hiked: 28.5km, 28.8km, 31.4km, 31.7km, 28.2km, 33.1km, 37.1km
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