Betten On Bike: DAY 43 - 22ND MAY 2013 - ECO BEACH RESORT

Day 43- 22^ndMay 2013 - Eco Beach Resort - rest day

Walter was keen to try out the fishing so left around 6.30am to walk to the point. Andrea & I had a leisurely breakfast and decided to do the self guided bushwalk (we had picked up a brochure the day before) and so we headed off and found the track and saw all the various numbered trees / bushes all marked in English / Aboriginal and botanical names. The Sandpaper Fig (the sandpaper like leaves were used to finish off tools and the ripe figs were good to eat, the mother-in-law tree where the leaves are positioned back to back, (the sign said that according to Aboriginal tradition mother-in law and son-in-laws must not directly face each other (interesting…), the fruit from the Gubing tree is reportedly the richest source of Vitamin C in the world (one fruit is equal to 50 oranges)– we zigzagged through the bush until the path began to climb to The Mini Bungle Bungle Look-out and when we reached the top that was exactly what we saw – the beehive shapes in brilliant orange and red hues but in smaller scale sitting as part of the coastline. These rocks are culturally significant to the Yawuru people. We then chose to climb to another look-out called The William Dampier Look-out where we saw that William Dampier had sailed past here in circa 1688 and he was the only explorer who had circumnavigated the world three times and that he would have looked towards this part of the W A coastline and seen the point where we were standing. It seemed to me that because of the remoteness of this area not much would have changed at all since he had sailed past in his sailing vessel all those centuries ago.

We decided to return via the beach which meant a walk through the Mini Bungle Bungles where we could see close up the various strata of the red rock formations and on one section we passed between some of the rock formations and had to just about hold our breath to get through as it was so very narrow.

The last section was along the wide, open sandy beach. This beach return walk is to a certain extent, tide dependent as this part of W A has the 3^rd highest tide in the world so we had been warned to check on the day’s tides as you can in fact get cut off if you are unaware of the tide changes.

Another walk to The Caves can only be done at low tide so on our return we checked to see when it would be low tide today and this is at 1pm so this is the recommended time for this walk.

However we decided instead to laze by the beautiful pool and then enjoy some delicious wraps on our filtered sunny deck. The next few days will be huge days with long cycle days planned.