Day 413 | hanging around Point Ann: day 1 of not much
rest day 1
Point Ann is one of the few campsites that are officially open in the western section of Fitzgerald River National Park. It’s huge, almost 330,000 hectares, with the middle part a no road wilderness.
A huge bushfire roared through here in the summer of 2008 and the scrub at the side of the road coming down from the highway is only just in recovery mode.
Point Ann is the start of the second rabbit proof fence and there’s remnant timber posts and netting laying on the ground in rusting heaps.
It’s a little isolated, there’s a loop road in that’s 50km either direction to the highway and then a 16km access road. This started soft having just been graded and then turned into as corrugated as any road I’ve been on once I met the parked grader halfway.
I’d arrived to my pick of 16 sites in an empty campsite on Friday night. That’s good.
No water: that’s not so good, but I had 3 litres remaining to last until Bremer Bay about 60km on. Wandering out to the point today I stumbled on a water tank near the whale watching platforms. The season for that, ie, whales, is winter, June to November, when Humpback and Southern Right varieties calve in the sheltered bay.
That extra water is useful, he suddenly plans a second day here, what else does the earnest bike tourer need for joyful camping?
Another white sand beach, it’s a short trot down to one of the typical perfect beaches I’ve been enjoying since I hit Wharton Bay.
The whole campsite is well sheltered with individual campsites carved out in the dense tea tree scrub and offering total wind protection.
Most sites have picnic tables, yahoo, and there’s a few pit dunnies scattered about. Perhaps as a legacy of the fire there’s a couple of new camp barbeques that have a hot plate for the meat eaters and a couple of gas burner rings for those who subsist on spaghetti.
No other customers: perfect.
Too good to last, by the second evening there’s half a dozen other groups. School holidays and Easter is nigh.
Yikes! I’ll have to find somewhere to hide for the next week.