Friday 5th and Saturday 6th January, 2024 At Cosy Corner East

We went on two walks yesterday, the first in the late morning to Cosy Corner West, which is a nearby beach that is more sheltered than the beach opposite Cosy Corner East Campground.

It was cloudy all day yesterday and cool enough to deter us from swimming, nevertheless there were swimming lessons in progress. In Albany you just have to go for it as you can’t rely on having warm, sunny weather just when you want it. However, it does happen and it can be quite hot, mid thirties, sometimes.

In the late afternoon we went for a walk in the other direction. We were looking for a lookout, but I don’t think we went far enough along to find it. We started inland and it was pretty warm on the track away from the beach. We arrived back to our campground approaching from the rear. It was actually hotter at that end of the campground than in our campsite, either due to being closer to the beach or being more sheltered from the sun. Probably both.

After tea we set up the projector and watched the movie Maestro based on the life of Leonard Bernstein, with a particular focus on his complicated relationship with his wife. Good acting and an interesting choice of scenes for exemplifying their lives made it very good entertainment. I’ve been thinking about it on and off since, surely the sign of a good movie.

This morning we went out for a walk getting away about 1.5 hours earlier than yesterday. Once again we went to Cosy Corner West, and this time climbed up the stairs to the Bibbulmun Track. Heading further west along the track took us eventually to the next beach, Hartman’s Beach. To reach the shoreline we had to go down a steep, gravel road, which was quite stressful as we were afraid of slipping and falling.

Once there we asked if we could get back to the Cosy Corner West beach via a beach path, but there wasn’t a way through, which meant we had to climb back up the steep road and go back along the same path. We contemplated asking one of the 4WD owners to take us up the road, but gave up and tackled it on foot. In fact, it felt much safer going up and even seemed shorter because we could look around us more.

The walk back was more enjoyable than I expected, and curiously felt shorter as well. After climbing down the stairs we were able to walk back along the beach to the campground and appreciated how much fresher the air was compared with on the bush walk. There were quite a few wildflowers on the walk, small, shy bush flowers, very pretty if you take the time to look.

We had eaten muesli bars on the walk, but still appreciated our quickly made sandwiches and bananas on return. As with yesterday I had a long afternoon nap before our normal afternoon tea of cups of black tea and biscuits.

From the photos you’d think that the clouds make it rather gloomy, in fact it has been a joy to walk in the current weather with maximum temperatures of about 22C and mostly cloudy.

Of course, the photos don’t make clear how steep the road is.