Lil'one Down Under: Christmas In Margaret River

Planning is not Rob's forte. Yes, I have learned in my many years of travel the joys of loosely organized days and that strict schedules are best limited to airlines. Yet, after hearing one seasoned Perthite after another say, "everyone goes to Margaret River for Christmas," my instincts told me we'd best have a good idea of what we wanted to do and where we were going to sleep.

We decided weeks ago that we would enjoy the good life for a few days then rough it for the rest of the time to maximize what we could see and do without completely breaking the bank. Under duress (with me freaking out at him for not being the least bit involved in the planning process) Rob promised to take a good look at the map and come up with ideas to get us through a few days. I took him at his word and didn't give it another thought - something I might think twice about before doing again…

Rob's 'plan' was to drive way south from M.R. to a very remote 4WD camp site on the Southern Ocean, spend a day dune surfing on 150 m dunes along the coast, then see where our whims took us from there. This could have worked if we had

1. left M.R. before noon,

2. had it not been raining,

3. had the road marked 'Seasonal Access Only' not been closed,

4. had the 50 km detour not forced us to turn around when that road became impassable, and 5. if we had queried a local or two about what we might actually find down there.

I had a 'bad feeling' about the whole situation when he showed me where we were headed on the map, but kept my dubious notions to myself. Well, at least until we had to turn around on the impassable 4WD track after 3 p.m. in the middle of BFE with no place to stay and a whole day completely wasted driving back and forth trying to get to an inaccessible camp site, then I kinda lost it.

The new 'plan' was quickly set into action - drive another 50 km north to an area with three neighboring campsites and try our luck on the busiest camping weekend of the year. This time we were a little more fortunate. We pulled into a cleared area about 5 km off the main road down a narrow 4WD track and set up camp. The area was inhabited by a rather large group of locals who had settled in for a week of 'camping' complete with all the necessities - dirt bikes, generators, music, booze, canoes, dogs, etc. They were pretty nice and didn't mind us tromping through their site to go play in the river, but damn they were noisy.

* * * * * * *

Having learned our lesson about the paucity of camp sites the day before, we left our camp intact for the next day. A low fuel gauge forced us to drive about 50 km north east to Nanup for fuel and coffee (after a terrible night's sleep I wasn't doing anything without my own fuel). We were quite pleased at Nanup's offerings (including an organic cafe with a multitude of gluten free offerings), and decided to wait out the heat of the day taking in the local nature walks in the woods and lunching in town.

Feeling sated and having stretched the legs, we decided to give the dues another go. Rob was quite convinced we could get to them without issue and that we'd be spending the afternoon dune surfing down to the water's edge. Again I was quite skeptical about how flawlessly this 'plan' would be pulled off, but decided to be a good sport and play along. Again, there were a few little problems:

1. there were no actual beach access points for a few hundred km between the campsite we were unable to reach and the town of Agusta,

2. even the tiniest 4WD track on the map piddled out a few km from the water,

and 3. Rob's little machine doesn't really have the guts to traverse the burliest tracks. And, again, we didn't bother to get some beta from locals on what we might actually encounter down there.

So, we drove and drove and drove along miles of fenced off farm land, with me getting progressively more frustrated and convinced that there was no way this was ever going to pan out, forcing Rob to prove me wrong. We finally found an ungated track heading toward the water and drove down it as far as we could. Rob ran up the sandy hill ahead of us and proclaimed that the beach was just a simple 2 km walk away. Boy, I wish I could have his

unflagging optimism.

The 4WD track quickly disintegrated into a mere 'roo trail and finally into nothing more than an overgrown fence line. The threat of snakebites or twisted ankles was very real, but we pushed on, determined to make it to the water after going so far. After bushwhacking for about 45 minutes, we finally broke free to less vegetated dunes and then on to the beach.

Rob was quite disappointed in his dunes, but I was completely thrilled to jump into yet another of the world's oceans…