We got up really early again in the forest outside Margaret River. It is situated about 15km from the town in a southerly direction so we decided we would just head on down south towards Cape Leeuwin and the little town of Augusta as that would be the lowest point along the coast we were going to go and would be heading back from there

Cape Leeuwin boasts yet another lighthouse, that charges to get anywhere near, so we just had a look around from the outside. The cape is also where the Indian ocean and the Southern Ocean meet, however you cant actually see where they meet without paying to get into the grounds of the lighthouse, and believe me it was too expensive, not just for us cheap backpackers. Anyway, the area itself also has lots of historic whaling settlements, we skipped these as we are moraly opposed to the whaling industry. Once we were done with Augusta, and that was pretty much it, although the coast around it was fantastic, we headed back towards Margaret river where we were going to spend our second last day. We went to the Rotary park just outside of town and had a bbq lunch before going for a nice walk along the river bank on one of the many many many walks that this great country has. The camp grounds for the night was about the same distance outside of town as the last one but in the direction of Perth. It was meant to be a nice sealed road all the way to the site but alas we get there and it turns out to be a wreck of a dirt road. Covered in sand and very very bumpy, we made it about 500 metres before deciding to turn around and heading for the beach town of Gracetown. I hummed "I'm going to Graceland" too myself, changing land for town in my head and off we went.

We got to Gracetown pretty late, the sun was beginning to set over the water out to the west and it was really beautiful. The sunlight coragating off the water as it set in under some sparse clouds which lit the sky up like it was on fire. There is a small site beside the beach set inside a lovely little bay, an idealic looking postcard. The wind started to kick up though and we moved the van around to try and lessen the impact, in vain of course, the wind seemed to be swirling around inside the bay because up the back of the beach were cliffs rising up towards the land so the beach and town are nestled right inside a little bowl with the ocean at the lip. The sun set fully and we nestled down to read our books and magazines and sleep off what we had decided would probably be our last night, yes we had cracked and the wind and cold and washing ourselves in the sea had done its damage. If the night was a bad one, we would head back to Perth in the morning. We woke up early again the next morning, with the sun. I got some nice photos of the sky heading inland as the sun rose but it was still very cold. We had really wanted to go swimming at Gracetown but we would never have heated back up again. We decided instead to head to Busselton for breakfast and a swim in the amazingly calm waters by the Jetty. However, we got to Busselton before anything opened so we just had our own breakfast and headed on towards Bunbury where we would get a coffee and a swim near the dolphins and then head back to Perth

All in all, I think we enjoyed the camping trip and we also hated it a little. We liked it enough to do it properly, and I would love to buy a nice hippy van and do it up to drive around Ireland and Europe. We really did drop the ball with our lack of planning and proper packing, but at the same time it was a really well improvised detour from what we had been doing. We went to places that we had never heard of and just had a laugh driving along in the van, I think it brought us closer, closer to madness that is. Still, if anyone is planning on doing a trip to anywhere civilized I would highly recommend taking a van off for a week at least to get away from hostels and things and rough it a bit. We did meet a Canadian couple who had driven all over Australia over the past four months in their camper and they loved it, maybe you get better at it or something!!!! Anyway, back to Perth, the easy way and a night in a bed with a toilet next door and most importantly a shower indoors!!!!