We got out of the blocks fairly early today – breakfast was at the old Gnarabup dunny, now the White Elephant Cafe, 650m from the resort, at 7:30am. We got there a bit early but already the place was buzzing, with a lot of hard-core beach swimmers fresh from their morning dip!
Andy picked us up from the cafe at 8:30am to take us back to the resort for our bags and we were on our way to the drop-off, Kilcarnup Rd. We had opted not to attempt to cross the Margaret River mouth – we knew we could have done it but we would have started the day wet and been sandy all day!
We headed off just before 9am down the Kilcarnup Track, which heads to the south end of Kilcarnup beach, and had a roughly 4km walk down to the beach. 4wd tracks had made the track firm in the tyre ruts, so the going was pretty easy. We saw heaps of kangaroo tracks and about halfway down got hit with a rain shower which saw us get our ponchos on quick smart, not wanting to repeat yesterday’s soaking!
At the junction of the track and the C2C we met our first southbound walker asking about the river mouth crossing and had to confess we had taken a ride around it – we probably got asked about 5 or 6 times in the end! After reaching the beach we headed north along the beach for about 1 1/2 km followed by another 1 km of intermittent rock and beach before leaving the beach, first along a 4wd track past Joey’s Nose and then a narrower trail heading inland and then north through the bush, basically following a ridge line around 500 m in from the ocean. We had seen a lot of pairs of walkers, more than the rest of the walk so far, but after Gnoocardup Rd we started to see guided walking groups, which made some of the tracks very soft and cut up.
About 5 1/2 km after leaving the beach, we reached Ellen’s Brook and followed that towards the sea, past Meekadarabee Cave, reaching the homestead 1 1/2 km later. A nice easy 13km day, very much appreciated after some hard walking in the three previous days and giving us the afternoon in Margaret River to get ourselves sorted out for the last three walking days!
steelewalking 
Fair enough not doing the Margaret River mouth crossing during the wet months. It was quite likely it would have turned out to be a swim and it’s not a matter of survival either. Sunny days ahead. : )
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