Day 16 – Hospitality and Hailstones

Only a brief update today, not so many pictures.

This morning started with a run through the Fitzgerald River National Park, which was a beautiful area. Sadly, as with a lot of places on this trip, I didn’t have time to explore the area fully.

After leaving the park, I rolled down the highway for a while until stopping at Jerramungup for fuel and food. There, I met two locals who were just about to go out for a ride, Fred and Allen. They offered to take me off the beaten track and show me some of the sights around the shire.

After an two hours of tight, winding trails (good fun, although I struggled to keep up with worn road tyres), we decided to turn back, however the storm that had been shadowing us decided to strike.

This was a full-on, fury-of-God biblical storm, complete with torrential rain, hailstones up to 10mm diameter, huge water runoffs over the track, and instant creek crossings up to 30cm deep at every dip in the ground. Very eyebrow-raising riding, but Suzi managed to keep her footing and keep pulling me through everything. Soaked to the bone, we headed back to town, noticing how dry the roads on the way back in were – to be told they’d only had a light sprinkle.

After a quick cuppa to warm back up (I was glad for the heated grips, too!) I hit the road again, trying to push in front of the storm that was now all around. I passed through a few patches of heavy rain but managed to hit the Stirling Ranges before the heavy clouds did. Scary looking sky though! (note, no filters or photoshopping here, that’s the actual colour of the storm clouds at 3pm)

The Stirling Ranges passed in a blur sadly, as I was low of fuel and wanting to stay ahead of the storm – but they looked interesting enough to want to come back and see more in future.

On impulse I followed a “Tourist Drive – Scenic Route” sign up to Mt Barker, which was sadly not as interesting a drive as it could have been – although visiting some of the many wineries in the area may have helped!

With the grey skies now catching back up, I pressed onward to the town of Denmark and checked in to a pub for the night – I figured after getting hailed on I deserved a proper bed!