Day 25: Harris Dam to Collie and Day 26: Rest Day, Collie
We welcome yesterday’s easy walk because today is a longer distance with many small ups and downs. The track passes mainly through jarrah as well as a little plantation eucalypt and farmland, with weedy sections around Harris Dam, as well as an inviting parkland with picnic tables. The highlight is the richly diverse Westralia Conservation Park adjacent Collie township: botanists and orchid enthusiasts, you’ll love it!
The Harris River below the dam
Overview map for today…
A long day of 22.9km with 340m elevation gain generated by many short ups and downs. We’re never sure if we prefer one long climb or many short climbs - it always seems the other is better when you’re doing the alternative! Use the Bibbulmun Track Foundation Map 3 Collie
Today is particularly rich in orchids despite weedy sections. My knees refuse to kneel!
Diuris longifolia (Purple Pansy Orchid)
Pterostylis sp
After a long downhill through purple and yellow pea bushes, we pause to enjoy the water views.
Still plenty of colour here!
Time for a snack and drink break. Stopping for a drink helps ensure we both stay properly hydrated: the “thirsty” switch gets a bit worn out on older folk so we often need to drink more water than we think we need. We have a short rest every hour for a drink, plus one snack in the morning and another in the afternoon.
A long section of old forestry track surrounded by yellow pea bushes. It’s pleasant but not especially exciting.
And then back into beaut country. Exciting! Keep your eyes peeled for orchids!
A double Caladenia macrostylis
And - how thrilling - a new species, the tiny Zebra orchid (Caladenia cairnsiana) only 15cm tall and flowers about 15mm across!
Approaching Mornington Rd North. The traffic is a bit of a shock!
We’ve seen surprisingly little farmland because so much of the Bibbulmun has been through forest. This is one of the things that makes this thru-hike so unique: most include a much higher proportion of road and/or agricultural land.
Westralia Conservation Park is a complete delight.
The Dancing Spider, Caladenia discoides. Almost always double headers with two dancers, and named by a botanist with a sense of humour!
We see numerous orchids in flower and bud, and the vegetation in the Park is clearly different to the other associations we’ve seen thus far. The planned expansion of the trail network to 35 km within this unique, small Conservation Park seems completely inappropriate when there are so many degraded areas nearby to develop. Additional trails will inevitably break up the already small area into even tinier blocks that will be more prone to the weed invasion already rife around its edges.
The last km into Collie township through the suburbs again seems to last forever. Clearly the last kilometre is the same number of metres but when the endpoint is in sight, those metres get longer, I’m sure of it!
Depending on which end of town you are staying, you will have a short, medium or long walk to your accommodation. We’re staying at the Collie Motel which is a longer walk in but closer to the shops… and food!
And boy are we ready for a rest day and a feed!
Day 26: Rest Day, Collie
Geoff and I have a Garlic Bread Scale. Let’s face it, if a place can’t get bread, butter and garlic right, there’s little hope for more complex recipes on the menu! Similarly, when there’s fantastic garlic bread, you can look forward to a great meal! This one at the Federal Hotel scores a respectable 7.5, possibly with a Hiker Hunger loading!
Feeling a bit sore yesterday, I hadn’t been sure whether we could reach the Visitor Centre before it closed (4pm weekdays, 2pm/3pm weekends), so Geoff rang them from Yourdamung to explain that we were arranging a taxi to pick up our resupply box and drop it at the Collie Motel. Instead, one of the fantastic staff said she’d drop it in because she was going past on her way home! This was during covid border closures so we were lucky with fewer people on the track and serendiptous rostering, but slower hikers - especially those arriving on weekends when the Centre closes earlier - should know that the taxi option is always available to them if need be.
Once again our “rest” day is quite rushed to get everything done, not least because I’m trying to stay off my Achilles. We’d booked a physio when we had reception around Yourdamung Hut. DON’T LET ANYONE TOUCH THE TENDON ITSELF, my own physio (pHD plus 5 decades of experience) texts me in caps. The physio I see today is a sweet young thing in her first job fresh out of training who seems a bit surprised when I ask her to work on everything but the tendon. I’m well looked after and she does a good job whilst managing to leave my tendon alone to rest as requested.
I explain this not to suggest that this treatment is right or appropriate for you, but because many of you also have health practitioners whom you’ve seen for years and whom you trust. Even when you’re a long way from home, it’s worth checking back with that trusted professional if you experience flareups of chronic conditions that they have successfully treated, rather than leaving things to chance with new practitioners who are unfamiliar with your body’s quirks.
For dinner, we again catch up with friends we’ve met on the track; the second night we avail ourselves of the Golden Eagle Chinese restaurant whose menu was standard but tasty and the serves enormous, with enough left over for breakfast the next morning. We are both eager to hit the next section of track.
