Friday 24th April 2009 – Albany to Cape West Howe

09:58, 110009, Left Middleton Beach Caravan Park.
After getting some gear from Bunnings and BCF we headed off for a day tour of coastal areas to the West of Albany.

11:20, 110044, Torbay Inlet
A pleasant, quiet sheltered area at the extent of the 2WD track prior to accessing 4WD tracks to beach.

We let the tyres down and headed off through the rough access track to the beach. We drove up a very soft track into an area behind the dunes.

We had some home made muffins and iced coffee in the car for morning tea, very pleasant.

We continued along Perkins Beach on quite soft sand to the inland track around the headland to Cosy Corner. The camping area is small, sheltered with toilets but no other services, see below.

Photo below looking West along beach from Cosy Corner East.

We stopped on the headland prior to Cosy Corner West and took photos.

We parked down on the beach and walked past the permanent professional salmon fishing camp, there were several small streams of fresh water draining onto the beach and they tasted very fresh and clean.
This is a beautiful sheltered cove, great for snorkelling.

This area used to be an anchorage for American and French Whalers trying to avoid the Albany Pilot Fees and Harbour Duties. They would hide in between Migo and Richard Islands.

13:35, Torbay Beach

Another nice natural sheltered camping area with toilets but no other services.

We parked the car on the near deserted beach (another 4wd was parked there with a man having an afternoon nanny nap). We had lunch and walked around to the headland.

We had some interesting finds on this beach, a new purple fleecy vest for Judy and a yellow bellied black snake.

We looked up the snake on the internet and we believe it was a Butlers Snake about 1m long. The Australian Venum Research Unit describes the snake as very dangerous, so just as well we kept our distance. The snake is also known as the spotted mulga snake and the yellow-bellied black snake, is common to this area and preys on lizards, snakes and small mammals. It looked like it had just eaten as it was very full bodied.

14:15, West Cape Howe Park Lookout
WOW!!! there are not enough WOW’s for this view!!

14:33, Shelley Beach

This is definitely not Caloundra’s Shelly beach, it is a big long beach with rugged black granite headlands, freshwater stream across the beach and a very small camping area with toilet facilities. This camp has 2WD access so smaller vans could be brought down from the main road.

We walked along the beach, crossed the stream to the headland and we collected shells for Axel and Henry. After having a chat with one of the fishermen we were given a feed of fish (Whiting, Skippys and Herring, which were great pan fried for tea later)

Torbay Head Track
We headed out to Torbay head because it is the Southernmost point in West Australia and there is only the Southern Ocean between here and Antarctica.
We had a 4WD drive trek book which inspired us to embark on this mini adventure. And it certainly was!
The track proved to be bumpy, very hilly, soft and sandy, skinny, bushy and remote.

There were rubber matts laid in the track in some difficult sections although these were poorly maintained and not always where you needed them.

The Gap on Torbay Point
This was extremely spectacular. It was also extremely exposed and we were buffetted by strong winds for the short time we stayed.

Part of the National Park has regrowth Karri and Jarrah forests from the clearing of the 1800’s

We had a fantastic day touring today, with fabulous views and exciting challenges on some of the difficult 4WD drive tracks. There were lots of rewarding destinations, the weather was fairly clear and we didn’t get bogged!

We did 103K’s today over 6 hours, much of it low range and slow.