We get a couple of early loads of washing on, so with a contingency of clean clothes we’re not out of the van park till around 9:30, we don’t get far as we only head into town to get a late breakie. After entering the packed café on the water front, we head to the bakery up the street. I convince the guys to try a Pastie, I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t that they where bad exactly, just the most unusual pastie I think I’ve had. The ultra thick shortcrust pastry was a bit much, and the filling would have been more at home in a pie, really odd!
The ocean down here is a wonderful colour again, and while the swell does not seem too bad, the waves are certainly smashing against the sea wall.
We take the “scenic drive” out of town, via the Pool of Siloam, and continue up the coast. We think there should be an inland coastal route for 10ks or so, then we’ll ether look at a short beach run, or track back to town via some inland lakes.
We only make it about 5ks and we find the only track is on a beach, this was not expected….. There are tyre tracks on the beach, but a walk indicates the sand is softer than I’d like. So we basically plan to turn around here. While we’re discussing this, we see a guy walking up the beach, first of all we think he may be stuck, but he’s part of a two car convoy just around the head. They want to come around, but wanted to make the sure the track was clear so they could gun it. They’ve come from Robe and suggested a lot of the beach was pretty “sketchy”, that’s enough for me.
Back through town, and up the coastal highway, at least taking this road, I get to see Woakwine Cutting. You can google the details, but this bloke and his employee, dug this massive ravine. Mostly with a tractor, to drain a peat swamp in order to make it better farm land. Amazing.
About 30odd k’s north we find this inland track, the first 10-20ks is just regular dirt road, but then it gets more interesting. A quick detour to a headland, and the coast here is just so impressive.
We stop at a few possible camp sites, but they are not super inspiring. We see a basic caravan park, just north of Robe, not much more than a fancy camp ground, it right on the beach, at the moment the wind is not too bad, so we think we’ll investigate.
Around this time George realises he’s left a towel and two pairs of pants back on in Beachport on the clothesline….. It’s only about 35min to drive back on the highway, so he goes to rescue them.
Doug and take a quick lap of Robe before driving to check out the van park. The park is empty. Not a single camper, hard to tell if it’s open or not. The wind is picking up and it’s pretty exposed, so we think we may just be better to go back to the national park. Back via Robe, with a quick stop for a small Fish and Chips and we meet George in Robe and make our way to the camp site.
The camp site is a bit inland, more than we realised when we all agreed to walk to the beach for sunset, we make it to the top of a dune and the view is good enough from here.
A slap up dinner and we try for an early night. I figure one more night on the coast before we start heading inland.
Your photo of the impressive coast line is beautiful, but certainly does not look like a good swimming spot. Glad you kept out of trouble that day.