14th March 2010 - Albany to Margaret River

Daily Mileage 418 kms
To Date 5551 kms

We woke this morning with wet tents outside, but dry inside. Packing up commenced as soon as we had finished our abloutions. Colin was finished about 20 mins before Alan as usual, so he said his farewells to our fellow campers, including Archie the Staffordshire Bull Terrier. He was very confused by the packing up process and would jump in fright at imaginary threats.

We set off before 8 am to have breakfast at Denmark about 70kms down the road. When we rode into town suitable cafes seemed thin on the ground at this time on a Sunday morning, but down a side street we found a couple doing a roaring trade. We had a nice brekky served by the by now compulsory nice sorts. We finished off with an apple just to balance the bacon and eggs.

At this stage the weather changed from light drizzle to steady rain and it stayed this way for the next 3 hours. We rode through forests that gradually changed into tall Karri old growth areas. We passed an anti-logging camp at the side of the road. The trees were magnificent as you can see in the photo.
We were heading to Cape Leeuwin which is the most SW point in Australia and the site where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet. Alan saw the lighthouse on Cape Leeuwin in 1987 while sailing from Mauritius to Fremantle on the Bounty for the Bicentennial celebrations. We had lunch in Augusta the nearest town and found several highly decorated cows on the main street.

These are part of CowParade Margaret River 2010, where over 100 talented artists have transformed 80 life sized cows into works of art. We have seen them in the most unlikely positions, including pulling a pint at a local pub. A similar event was held in Brussels and Catherine was given a book with all the painted cows in it.

The light house at Cape Leeuwin is the tallest on the Australian mainland at 39 m. It was built in 1895 by the WA Government because of the great number of shipwrecks at the Cape. It is made of limestone blocks and still uses the original Fresnel lens though with an electric light. There used to be four lighthouse keepers, but now it is unmanned. We took a guided tour up the tower: all 176 steps and had a great view from the top.


One of the amazing things at Cape Leeuwin is the meeting of the Indian and Southern Oceans. We could see the waves in the Southern Ocean coming in from the SE (because of strong local winds) meeting the inexorable deep sea swell coming from the west in the Indian Ocean. Alan and Colin are pictured posing at the sign.

We are staying tonight in a cabin in a Caravan Park in Margaret River. Very luxurious compared to the last four days. Hopefully we will have a sound night's sleep unaffected by either the music or the early morning risers at Albany. We are both suffering fatigue from lack of sound sleep and by early afternoon are fading badly. Today I accidentally rode off the bitumen onto the gravel at the side of the road near Cape Leeuwin due to tiredness. I thought that I would crash, but in the end it was quite easy to get the bike safely back onto the bitumen. We will have to be careful on the rest of the trip.

I called Davy Mussen tonight to check that he is ready to store our bikes. Everything is ready for us and we expect to arrive at his unit at 4:30 tomorrow. Tomorrow morning we will do a brief tour of the local wineries as Margaret River is one of the premium wine areas in Australia.