Thursday dawns bright and fair but we’re in no hurry to do anything this morning, so finish the Times cryptic after breakfast, a bit of reading, morning tea, a bit  more reading…….must be time for lunch!

Since it’s a nice sunny day we decide to go back to Young  River to take some photos and do a little more fishing.    This is a magic spot, so peaceful, we have the place to ourselves and consider ourselves so lucky to be able to access such beautiful places.

   

Believe it or not we get a bloody telephone call out here but we do have to climb to the top of the hill to get another signal bar or so.

Fishing is really hard work here……….. and the locals take it pretty easy too…………….but then there’s the fish….

      

Two nice Black Bream, one 410mm the other a mere 380mm, apparently these are a very good size and will taste even better after a day in the fridge.

There is a 3 km 4 WD track to get into this Young River spot but it is in itself an interesting run through the bush and looking over Lake Cumbellup.

  and by the time we get back there’s time for quick cuppa before I have to go over to the camp kitchen on cooking duties.

Friday a beautiful day, a leisurely breakfast, we’ve run out of Times cryptics and have to make do with knocking off a couple of Telegraph cryptics over the porridge.

A morning spent reading, suddenly it was time for lunch, where does the time go?

This afternoon we decided to drive down to the sand bar that separates the sea from the inlet.   This has been closed for years but occasional high tides do break through and bring new stocks of fish into the inlet, the last time this happened was 2013.   Since then there has been very little rain so the water level in the inlet is gradually dropping.    There is a 3m difference in levels in the inlet from low to high depending on the rainfall.

The track out to the inlet is along the the edge and sometimes it disappears in the water but it’s all hard sand so it isn’t a difficult drive.    We have a video taken by the DashCam which I’m trying to post on the blog or, if that doesn’t work, we’ll send it to Dropbox or something, if I can work out how to do it!

The Southern Ocean east……………………………..and west…………………………………………………………the inlet on the other side of the sand bar. We walk over the dunes/bar to the ocean and then back and round the top part of the inlet and Roger decides to have a quick dip.

   

Saturday and we’re leaving Stoke’s Inlet this morning, rather reluctantly, we have really enjoyed our stay here and will certainly be back again sometime. 

The idea is to get somewhere close to Albany so that we don’t have far to go on Sunday morning to get to the Rifle Range (the place where we’re joining some more Bushtracker Owners for a few days).

The run along the South Coast Highway is pretty easy going, very little traffic so with the cruise control at around 85 kph we can sit back and enjoy the ride, there is very little wind so the fuel consumption is reasonable, the sun’s behind us so easy on the eyes, all in all a good day to be driving to Albany.   

Looking at WikiCamps (a very useful app on Pat’s iPad), there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of free camps this side of Albany, so after a bit of discussion we decide to go straight to the Rifle Range.    We get there at about 1530 and there already several vans there. After we’ve said hello to old friends we get the van levelled and the awning out, put the kettle on, get out the table and chairs and it’s afternoon tea time!     Lot of catching up to do, it’s soon going to be beer o’clock and there’s a happy hour 9or two) over in the club room before dinner.