Day 83 – 27/2/14 - Condingup – Duke of Orleans WA

We were up and had driven the 30ks to ‘The Duke’ arriving there by 8am, the only problem being that they don’t open till 9! The owner spotted me and we were in, set up with the laundry on by 8:30 – that must be a world record! It wasn’t long and the Hernandez’s arrived with the boys jumping for joy! After a bit of stuffing around we headed for the beach. First we went to Little Warbuton Beach, an awesome little sandy cove, about 200m long, protected on all sides. I was keen to get to the big white sandy beaches so we let the tyres down and headed for Warbuton Beach.

Warbuton is a magical place. Crystal clear water rolls up and down silky white sand beaches with red white, grey and black granite headlands towering out of each end of the 4 or 5km long beach. We pulled up and the boys, including Damo and Brendan their BFF, headed for the sand dunes with their boogie boards. One of the benefits of the zoom lense is that I don’t have to trapse in after them to get photos! Yeah! After working up a bit of a sweat they hit the water, which is pretty cold down here, and had a great time catching a few waves. However it wasn’t long before they retreated purple lips quivering in the wind.

At the western end of the beach we crossed over the dunes which took us through to Victoria Harbour (Beach). When we came onto the beach I was so glad we had retreated from Lucky Bay as this was equal to if not better and bar one other car tucked way down the end of the beach we had it all to ourselves! We saw a school of herring and the boys grabbed their nets and went after them, unsuccessfully .They then

headed for the dunes and, to my shock, dug a cave in the sand to try and get out of the wind, which is a constant in this part of the world. After explaining to them the dangers we headed to the beach, the Hernandez’s back to camp, and we had sandwiches sitting alone in one of the most beautiful places in Australia, if not the world!

The contrast between the black of the tyres and the white of the sand was cool,
but not quite captured here,

We walked around the headland and found amongst other things some interesting rock structures and I climbed to the top of the headland to capture some magical shots and met the rest of the fam on the beach to walk back to Izzy.

The small dot on the beach is our truck!

We headed back to camp and the boys played with their BFF while we relaxed and had a couple of drinks with the Hernandez’s. Like usual it wasn’t too long before we were in bed.