So we left Margaret River with just a coffee for a kick off. Pretty bad sleep as people at the unit opposite decided to have a party until 1.30 am. Our destination today was to Albany. The road soon got interesting with the opportunity to actually wear the sides a bit. A bit of twist on the throttle was in order to maximise the lean required to sever the flat edges off the tyre. A bit of fun too. A bit awkward though when you are carrying your house on your back. Never the less the fun was had. The temperature was quite warm but the thick forests blotted out most of the sun's heat. We stopped in Pemberton where breakfast was finalised before butts on board again with another stop in Denmark. Again with the twisty road and the ride just seem to disappear when you have something to do behind the bars. The forests in this part of the world are amazing. Huge trees that are right beside the roads edge. I didn't play with the GPS too much whilst running through these babies. The final leg of the journey leads us into Albany. What a view to ride into. The town is perched on the side of the steep hills near the port. No one gets a bad view of the water.

We end up at the Middleton Beach Caravan Park which is right on the beach. John and Shirl go the cabin option whilst I maintain my manhood and pitch the tent. The campsite given to me has the beach almost right behind[sc1] my tent. I could hear the ocean. Things couldn't be any better. At least I thought that at the time. Once settled we went back into town to get groceries for dinner. We toured around a bit and went down to the port which was man made. There was some serious granite work happening here.

A few pics taken and then we went to the ANZAC memorial up on top of the hill. Unfortunately it was about to close but we had a quick look around the outside. Had a great dinner of pasta and red wine back at camp and I decided to have an early night. As I was settling in and about to get into my tent the heavens opened up and my pristine camp site quickly started going downhill. John and Shirl had decided to go to bed and I couldn't go there sooking. I improvised by befriending my camping neighbours who had a substantial tent with a verandah under it. Not only that with only a few minutes of waffle it came with a beer as well. Great people. The guy was an electrician who worked the oil rigs for years and his girlfriend was a Russian geologist who worked for BHP billiton until recently retrenched. Like all good Western Australians they didn't panic when put off they simply took a year off and went travelling. So I talked to them until the rain subsided and then went to bed.

The issue with my tent is that it is too short and during the night my feet pushed the zip open and my feet stuck outside. Now until recently this has not bothered me but the nightly drizzle found me waking up with wet feet and sleeping bag. To top things off it wasn't a natural awakening. No….My pristine campsite was positioned below one of the shoreline fog horns for ships entering the port. I guessed at 3.30 am when they started going off, it was foggy outside. But they only went for three hours or so.

Finally stayed awake and got up at five. Only thing I could do was pack a wet tent and sleeping bag and hope to dry them out later that day when we hit Esperance. So by 5.30 am I was loaded and ready to ride. Apparently John and Shirl had a great night sleep.