Moses Rock to Caves House

First of all, great night last night at Swings in Margaret River with Bruce Steele! During and after dinner we thought about the merits of trying to cross the Wilyabrup Creek and decided we would not, and this morning our host, Deb, said on last reports it was waist deep. The plan was confirmed when, as soon as I mentioned to Andy we had a new plan, he said, Moses Rock North! In fact we wanted to go a bit further south and so we negotiated a spot where the C2C crossed the track to Moses Rock south.

No sooner had we said goodbye to Andy than the rain set in and we put our ponchos on, something that would happen several times during the day! About 10 minutes into the walk we were treated by a big troop of kangaroos, some pretty big! Just over a km after starting we passed Moses Rock North, and from there some very damp tracks, one section so damp it needed a board walk, until, almost 2 km later we descended down a steep dune to the turn off to Quininup Falls. The falls are about 300 m off the track and, after all the rain we’ve had, quite spectacular!

After the falls we headed back to the track and on to Quininup Beach and over the creek, where we were supposed to briefly walk along the beach before turning up the sand dune to the ridge above it. Unfortunately I missed the turn off, so we had a medium walk along the beach followed by a short walk back to the turn off and a quite steep clamber up to the track. From there the track was as advertised – undulating terrain and sandy track – for almost 6km past Cape Clairault into Indjinup point, stopping part way along the track for an early lunch and again at the point for some fruit.

We stuffed the walk along Indjinup Beach up a bit – I had planned to avoid the beach and use the road since we had had enough of beach walking by now! However, the road and the track diverge a bit and we had to scramble between the two down onto to the beach and then climb back up again. No more shortcuts! Anyway, a couple of kms later we were back on the track and made good time to Wyadup Rocks, which we reached in good time, again just under 2km later.

After Wyadup, things really slowed down. Not long after leaving the rocks, we headed sharply up and then over the headland between Wyadup and Canal Rocks. The track was really washed out so we had to pick our way through the limestone outcrop, taking 38 minutes to do less than 2 km! It was not much better from Canal Rocks to Smith’s Beach, 50 minutes to do 2 1/2 km to Smith’s Beach resort, having to clamber over granite boondies before reaching the road from the resort to the point.

Unfortunately the restaurant/cafe at the resort is closed between 11 am and 4 pm, so we had a brief rest at the southern end of Smith’s Beach before heading to Caves House. Just to really annoy us, Gunyulgup Creek (no, I’ve never heard of it either) was flowing quite strongly but we’d seen a couple walk up the north side of the creek and then back down the south side so we asked them whether there was a bridge, which there was!

The last hour and a bit was a real slog but at about 4:30 pm, just over 4 kms after leaving Smith’s Beach Resort, we made it to Caves House, where we have a very nice room for the night. Looking forward to a beer!