27/3/20 Gracetown to Borden

  From Bunbury , we headed down to Gracetown in the Margaret River Region , and stopped there for 3 nights . You just have to go out to the coast and check out some of their surfing spots .

  Some of the locals were out & about catching some waves , oh and some air .

  This is Gracetown from above , the houses seem to be cut into the shrubbery on the hillside .



 And again .



  This is looking south , there are numerous surfing spots down there , just need to know where to go .



  A front was coming in , and the clouds put on a show for us .

 AT Gracetown we found a walking track that headed out to the southern headland of the bay . It wound through a grove of Tea Trees .

  A bit further down we discovered this dry stone wall and stainless steel monument , as well as the surfboard shaped seat . There are 9 names in the stainless steel - these are the adults & children who died here when the cliff collapsed under them . They were on the cliff watching a school surfing competition between Margaret River and Gracetown Primary Schools - 5 parents and 4 children died.
 Very moving !!



 We headed to Prevelly , home of the Margaret River Pro Surfing Competition , this is where Margaret River flows out to sea - when there's not a beach in the way that is .

 And again .

  The madness of Corona Virus has reached here as well - supermarkets cleaned out of most of it's stock . We tried to do some shopping , but couldn't get everything we wanted - not a potato , sweet potato , onion to be seen . Moving over to the meat section , there was 2 small pieces of scotch fillet , some prepacked turkey meat , but nothing else - no chicken , no mince , no lamb , no pork . Then no pasta , rice & flour & definitely no toilet paper - what is it about toilet paper , you can only use so much !!
  From there we started towards Esperance to meet my sister & brother in law . We drove through Nannup to Manjimup & through to Cranbrook before stopping for the night at the small town of Borden .
  This was some of the magnificent forest we drove through .

  This 45m specimen of Jarrah is the " King Jarrah " just outside Manjimup , there's also a nice forest walk .

  Fuelled up at Cranbrook and headed off again , the road took us along the northern edge go the Stirling Range National Park , resulting in some nice views .

 Further down we were looking directly at Bluff Knoll , the great walk I did last year to the top . This year it's completely different , fires over December and January have decimated the park . As we drove further the scale of the fire took hold - no wonder the park has been closed to camping and walking .

 Grass trees seem to be the first thing to start the regrowth phase after the fires - these 2 looked good .

 This is Mt Trio , the fires burnt the lot from top to bottom .

  With the fire devastation behind us , we drove up there road a bit further to the little town of Borden where we camped the night after a long day driving .
 Here's a map link :- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TsPVCH2tDqgz_oH-1W0nTClaKPgsSnLA&usp=sharing