Fitzgerald River National Park (East)
We were lucky to get a 3 night site booking on our day of arrival at Four Mile Campground in the eastern end of Fitzgerald River NP. Any campsite after Mason’s had a hard act to follow, and the discovery of ticks within an hour of setting up didn’t win Four Mile and favours. We all wore our trousers tucked into our socks after that, and did nightly full body inspections for the little buggers. In the three night stay, Matthias was the only one of us to fall victim. We also had frequent visits from a resident roo who we watched scare the bejeezus out of other unsuspecting campers as he’d bound boldly into people’s camp sites, probably dragging ticks with him.
More memorable than the camp itself were our neighbours, another family of four, Mum Jade and Dad Sean with two boys Oliver and Jack, each three months older than our two. Oliver and Hugh hit it off immediately, their common aptitude for bike riding making the perfect icebreaker. And, most exciting for Matthias and me, within minutes of watching Oliver hoon on his two wheeler, Hugh suddenly mastered the self-start on his bike, a skill that had evaded us despite lots of training attempts. This is a game changer for us. Hugh has a whole new level of independence and we in turn have whole lot of independence from Hugh!
Our first day in the park we did a short morning walk out to Cave Point then a big climb up East Mount Barren in the afternoon. Hugh was an absolute trooper. Though the distance up East Mount Barren wasn't much over 3km return it was a tough rocky climb up that took us a good 3 hours all up. I have to take some of the credit for my tireless coaching efforts, diversionary tactics and emersive role-playing. And kudos to Matthias for carrying Claire the whole way in the backpack and providing a steady stream of snacks.
Day two saw us snorkeling at Barren’s Beach, where I won the day with an octopus sighting. In the afternoon we walked through winding coastal heath to the mouth of the Hamersley Inlet. The wide sand bar of the closed mouth led out to a wild and isolated beach with sawtooth rocks that looked like something out of Game of Thrones.
