Munda Biddi - Donnybrook to Nglang Boodja Camp

We left Donnybrook at 9:00am today, we had some time up our sleeve and the owner of the hotel consumed a bit of it, as he loves to have a chat, and was quite engaging. He was having a challenging time renovating the hotel and juggling an almost capacity loading of the accommodation. He bought the place as a sideline to a farm but now finds the farm a sideline to his tourism enterprise.

Distance travelled = 47 km
Temperature 11 to 26. Not too humid. No rain and fairly calm.

Nev required some surgery on her rack. With the pounding of the trails it bent. We found some tubing and zip tied and taped them to the rack to act as a splint.

Being a fruit and vegetable growing area there are many pickers who stay, they left some butternut pumpkins and apples for any of the guests to help themselves. One butternut pumpkin and some apples was ample for our needs.

We met up with Jon who camped in the local park at the bakery. The park apparently had power and lighting so Jon was able to charge up his electronic accessories. The bakery was nothing to write home about.

This town has an amazing park for the kids, one of the most elaborate I have seen in a public park. (image courtesy http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/6676799)

This section's start was a real pleasure compared to the final stage of yesterday. We elected not to backtrack onto the Munda Biddi trail per the map as the soft dirt surface had no appeal. Instead we followed the highway out and the dirt service road to the rail.

This dirt service road was ride into a larder. We came across a tomato plot, orchards of apple and plum. A windfall of fruit literally, loads of fruit lying on the ground going to waste, so we couldn't let that happen to all of it! There simply is not enough workers to do the job. Waste not, want not, as the saying goes.

A good part of the ride start was bitumen, all the way to Boyanup. It was a pleasing ride on quite country roads. We side tripped to Boyanup to stop for morning tea. We asked a local for a suggestion on a coffee venue. He strongly suggested the second shop along called the Yavash cafe. Run by a young lady, she did serve a good coffee and scones and her family was there proudly promoting her birthday.

After coffee, the next point of reference was the Crooked Brook forest. This was set up as nature information park with a concrete paveway showing placards of information on the trees and animals that could be found. There was quite a noisy flock of red tailed black cockatoos.

It was a nice place to stop and have lunch. Mark had to continue the daily swim ritual and was the only one keen to have a dip in a less than desirable looking dam.

Jon felt a pressing need to gain a few km today and decide to leave us so that he could complete the journey to Perth in a timely fashion. We wished him a safe trip. Today could easily be extended beyond the 47km we are doing, as the grades and road surface are much easier than the previous ones. I would have done the same if the need to go to Perth was there.

After the Crooked Brook forest there was some delightful single track travelling through marri forest.

Then we had good bitumen road until we got to Ferguson. At Ferguson some challenging hills were presented, fortunately with a dirt road surface. This is the beginning of the range of hills surrounding the dam forming Lake Wellington. We had lunch at the top of one of the hills in front of a property shading under some trees.

We moved into the national park enjoying some more single track.

Exiting the single track we met a lady at a place called Wellington Mill, who was setting up some accommodation and a cafe. A nice setting for the venue.

Our campsite - Nglang Boodja - was reached at 3pm. It was again smaller than the ones south of Pemberton, but built to the same high standards. All in all a very pleasant day.

Dinner with the fresh vegetables and fruit.