Day 4, Thursday September 15, 2011

Waitpinga was the first campsite with actual rubbish facilities so far and I took great pleasure dumping my rubbish bag and the few pieces I had collected along the trail. Filled up my water from the large masonary water tank and then I was off again a bit after 8am to walk the sandy track out of Waitpinga. It was mostly gently uphill and arrived back at the cliffs via scrubland and erosion reclamation areas in about 3-4km. Awesome views into the sun of King Head and West Island each time the trail re-emerged onto the cliff tops. I had a break at a full size Picnic table installed by the Friends of the Heysen in memory of Peter Hill, a past official in the club and maintainer of this section of the trail.

King Head and West Island from the picnic table

From there the walking was easy and pleasant. Mostly downhill and breaking out of the scrub a few times for magnificent views of the southern ocean rolling onto the dark slabs at the base of the cliffs. The scrubland was replaced by grassy hillsides as the trail approached King Head and King beach where the Heysen Trail leaves the coast and heads inland.

West Island and Cliffs

At this point, I left the Heysen and continued on the coastal track and into Encounter Bay and Victor Harbor stopping at the first restaurant I came across for a feed of fish and chips on the beach washed down by a cold beer! Stayed overnight at the Victor Holiday park where my tent looked quite out of place nestled in between massive caravans and motor homes!

Dinner at the Hotel Victor where they redefine value for money pub meals. The roast of the day, (small) was yummy and more than I could eat and only $14.

Bus home in the morning, thus ending my first Heysen interlude.

Trip Stats:
Day 1: 16.55km, 696m Ascent
Day 2: 19.49km, 801m Ascent
Day 3: 22.21km, 662m Ascent
Day 4: 18.75km, 387m Ascent
Total: 77km, 2546m Ascent

Day 3, Wednesday September 14, 2011

Woke early and rose to witness a pearly sunrise from the beach rock formations below my campsite. Probably the unusually loud ocean noise and the strong moonlight on the tent may have had something to do with that (the waking early). In any case, it was a magnificent place to be at dawn. Also of note re sleeping: my WM Ultralite sleeping bag is too warm for these temps – the weather didn’t get below 10C minimum on any night and I often started the night lying on top of the bag with the temps into the teens.

Tunkalilla Sunrise

Once packed and fed, I set off down towards the eastern end of Tunkalilla beach (the whole beach is about 4.5km long) and eventually followed the signs leading off the beach and up behind Tunk head. And I do mean up! The sign at the bottom says ‘walkers follow fence’ and the fence goes straight up a grassy slope about as steep as you can reasonably climb. My GPS recorded 110m elevation gain in 300m.

Walkers follow fence

Steepish…

At the top of the slope I was rewarded with a short downhill section and then a steady uphill climb through cattle pasture with good expansive views of the countryside. Eventually, this bliss was replaced by despair as the path dumped out onto a hard roadwalk for 4-5km and past the Balquhidder campsite. Balquhidder has no facilities or water. (Update: as of December 2011, facilities have been installed, the tank should have water after the next rains) There was a somewhat dirty and slow running creek there, so perhaps you could use it with a filter and steripen, but as it was still too early to camp I just stopped for lunch and pressed on. The camp area itself is pleasant enough, and there are trees so I expect one might hang a hammock there too.

What followed was a long, sometimes steep, grassy track walk through farmland, cow paddocks and alongside a creek to get back to sea level at a rocky beach known as a breeding ground for Hooded Plovers (of which none were in evidence, although I did see some on Parsons beach a bit later)

Peaceful Cattle

Hooded Plover sign

Some more more cliff edge trail walking followed and then onto Parsons beach, Parsons lookout and Waitpinga beach and then the Waitpinga campsite. Ever since I hit the first beach I had been seeing fresh footprints in the sand, and they got fresher and fresher the further I went. I caught the owners at the Parsons beach lookout – another school group that had started at Balquhidder that morning and were apparently making a hard slog of the beach walking. The lookout had toilets and water. The water tank had 2 taps – the bottom one yielded rusty water and the top one clean and fresh but very slow running, maybe not a lot of water in the tank!

Waitpinga campsite is well laid out in a grassed area behind the dunes. Tank water available and pleasant tasting from a masonry tank. Toilets (a bit smelly) and trees. Yes, probably could hang a hammock here too! I set camp amongst some trees to shade the moon and the lights and had a pleasant nights sleep.

Day 2, Tuesday September 13, 2011

Up early as usual when on a walk, had brekky of muesli and a cuppa tea before packing up and wandering behind the bushes for my morning ablutions only to get dive bombed by the kamikaze maggie again! Intended destination was at least Tapanappa and perhaps Tunkalilla Beach if I made good progress. Found much steepness up and down and found the terrain challenging but still reached Tapanappa around midday.

Passed the turnoff to Trig Point Campground on the way, but as I had plenty of water I felt no need to make a visit. Down into the Deep Creek valley to see the best waterfall of the trip, but unfortunately, not a good time for photography in bright backlit conditions. I did get some nice shots of the water swirls though.

Deep Creek Waterfall Swirls

Tapanappa was a few km up the track, pleasant walking through a couple of valleys. The temperatures were warming up and I was quite warm by the time I arrived. I noticed a tank in the campground off to the left of the track so headed over to fill up my water bottle.

Tapanappa Tank and Conveniences.

Probably that little diversion is the reason I didn’t see the promised shelter or maybe it has been removed. Tapanappa boasts two toilet and tank installations, one tank at 70% full and the other 90% at the time of my visit. Hammock hanging would be no problem here.

Self Registration point at Tapanappa

Walked on down to Boat Harbour Beach via the apparently new trail re-route. Hard to imagine Boat Harbour Beach as any sort of Harbour, very open, exposed, rough and rocky!

Boat Harbour Beach

On to Tunkalilla Beach which was an absolute beauty. Didn’t see any sharks, but did see a seal and a dolphin pod put on an amazing surfing show for me. Great stuff! With all the indecision about official campsites at Tunkalilla , I scouted about and found a site just above the beach that was great. I guess its not something they can encourage though, if everyone camped there it would be degraded pretty quickly I think. I consoled myself that it was grassed and adjacent to farmland and enjoyed the camp. Turned on the phone and found signal again. What? I thought most of this walk was out of range?

Camped above the beach

By now, I had realised that the hipbelt on my new pack (Aarn Peak Aspiration) was too large, so I emailed Aarn Tate to see if I could get hold of a smaller size (I already knew there were none in Australia) – later on he replied yes and we organised it on the trail. I was even able to paypal the payment from the top of a hill.

No Hammock sites that I saw at Tunkalilla beach – there are some houses with stands of trees nearby, so it might be possible as the houses don’t appear to be occupied (no lights) but YMMV. I fell asleep to the sound of thundering waves pounding the beach not that far away, and woke to a magnificent sunrise on the beach.

Rock formations on Tunkalilla beach at sunrise