Days km: 31.8km
Total km: 784.3km

I slept in this morning. It was really, really hard to get going, and though I got a decent amount of sleep I was still pretty damn tired.

The track weaves through the Wool Bale hills, large granite outcrops that dot the landscape. On one hand, I was grateful we didn’t have to climb them all, but on the other hand it would have been good to have the option of a side trail here and there. I did go over a couple of small granite sections, which always makes for interesting walking when they are wet.

I got excited when I hit my first sand dune, expecting to see the ocean at the top, but alas, all I got was a splendid view of the next dune I would have to climb. All in all it took a good 45 minutes until I finally saw the Southern Ocean.

For me, hitting milestones in big hikes has always felt a little underwhelming. It’s only after a few days or weeks later that it sinks in. This hit different though, I felt elated. For one the ocean meant I only had a little over 200km to Albany. I felt like a weight, one I didn’t know I had even been carrying, had been lifted. I now knew I was going to finish this thing, and that was a pretty damn good feeling.

The views were spectacular, but soon the reality of beach walking kicked in. Once the track turns away from the pretty views at the water’s edge it’s a hard slog climbing up and down the dunes. It was well after 1pm when I arrived at the junction to Long Point Shelter, I really should have stopped, it had been a tough day, but the siren call of a short walk into town tomorrow was too hard to resist, so I plodded on.

My speed increased after the track finally turned back inland, but by then the light was failing. The track was nice enough to wash the sand from my shoes by providing some long sections of thigh deep wading. I don’t recommend doing this in the twilight hours, it is not fun. It was full dark by the time I reached the base of Mt Clare. This was the first proper elevation I had hit in a long while, and after walking up and down countless sand dunes I was already beyond tired, so the climb was a real end of day motherf@$er. The rain started bucketing down as well, just for the ambience I guess. It was saying, Hey Lee, you should have stayed at Long Point and tackled this tomorrow you impatient idiot. It was just after 7pm when I made it into camp, drenched. Thankfully I had the shelter to myself. Hanging up my wet clothes, I consoled myself with the fact I only had 10km into Walpole tomorrow.