Mouth of the River

The centre of town is a bit of a mess at the moment. The main street is closed off as it’s being “beautified”, but it’s taking a great number of heavy vehicles and workers in hi viz to accomplish this - and they start rather early!

I drove out of town on Wallcliffe Road towards the rivermouth. This brings us to Surfers Point, “which has some of the most consistent, spectacular, high-quality surf on earth”. So says this sign:

There is also a newly installed shark alert siren:

The woman in the photo above is setting her small Paddington Bear on the rail so as to take his photo, but he keeps falling off.

I spent half an hour watching three expert surfers showing off their skills, battling the enormous waves: scary and thrilling for onlookers:

I had planned to walk across and up the opposite cliff towards Cape Mentelle. In summer there is a sandbar which allows this, but there has been so much rain recently that the river is flowing very fast and who knows how deep it is?

Margaret River comes in from the right and was a swirling mass of brown water as it met the incoming tide. There was one set of footprints on the other side. So somebody had managed it. Walkers on the Cape to Cape really have no option but to take off their boots and wade across.

The owner of my accommodation in MR advised me to walk south towards Prevelly instead. There is a nice easy coastal footpath which ends at a popular cafe, the White Elephant. It was full of people having lunch, but I had no money with me. On the way back, after toiling up the one steep ascent to the car park, two women who were resting on a seat said I was an inspiration because I kept going!