Day 428 | Cosy Corner Beach East: so long bed, he's back out in nature

32 km | Heading west total: 15,290 km

Another beach camp. This may go on a bit in the next weeks although there’s also the famous tall tree forests coming up.

I nestled into what turned out to be a great little campsite hidden in the melalucas in the sand dunes. The standard ferocious winds, not prevailing today, turn the tree tops into an umbrella canopy, dense and making the campsite very intimate, and, as the location nomenclature suggests, quite cosy. The trunks are twisted under the wind-shaved foliage.

The addition of a picnic table, the ocean’s crashing sound effects and a few groups of fellow travellers, and, voila, perfect campsite. Cosy indeed.

Last night I was cosy in my backpacker’s bed, man they are comfortable, that’s beds in general but this one was ok.

About 1am four strangers staggered in from the pub into the eight bunk room, 2 gals and 2 blokes, 3 Poms and a particularly loaded German.

A cell phone started ringing, building intensity with some unidentified tune relevant to the owner’s circumstances no doubt, but she certainly wasn’t going to get up. Couldn’t.

Ring again after maximum volume had been attained for a while. Repeat. Then again insistently. Finally the Pom guy lurched up and somehow killed it.

Plenty of incoherent giggling masquerading as conversation abruptly halted by the German’s single short profane sentence that immediately transformed into melodious snoring. Eventually, as a crescendo was reached the other German bloke, who has to start work at 8am, dragged himself groggily from his bunk and whispered something in German in his ear. Whatever threat had been issued certainly penetrated his unconciousness and then there was finally silence of the kind that seven strangers in a room together share.

Meanwhile out on the street others were smashing stubbies on the road and listening to the glass roll down the steep Albany incline.

Cosy in that bed maybe but tonight the decibels are provided by nature down at Cosy Corner Beach East.

Good to get the monthly socialisation over in one big hit.