Sunday January 4

Mostly no resting on the way, but spent a fair bit of time chatting with people on the way, trying to get info about what New River lagoon and PB area was like.  Apparently the weather had been awful up till a day or so ago, and had rumours of 40-50 people banked up at the airport, then working their way along the coast towards Cockle.  This was true.  It seemed very populated, almost like the Overland Track! "G'day, how are going?" or "Hi there, how are you?" every ten minutes.  Thankfully this only lasted the one day, then it was a lot more private.

I managed to impress some inexperienced mainlanders and foreigners with my "toughness" and casual approach to solo walking the South West, and planning on exploring Precipitous Bluff.   Little did they know how careful I was being, and how I quaked inside at night when the wild noises swirled around the tent at night.

I can see now why we never went east-west along the South Coast.  This is definitely a harder way to go - you're constantly climbing all the way to Hilltop.  Pretty exhausting work.  I was very lucky it was sunny and warm.  Mud was not a problem (although the button grass bogs never dry out), the only thing that worried me was the damn trippy grass.  I had to be pretty careful to avoid a fall on the descent to Surprise Bay.

One thing that concerned me more than the mud bogs was the logs that people had thrown in.  Although the mud itself wasn't dangerous, the possibility of stepping on the edge of a sunken log and getting a twisted ankle or slipping and falling was always there.  The staff was very handy for detecting where they were, as well as the depth of the bog.  Although most of it was inconsequential (ankle deep) there was a few on the button grass hills that were extremely nasty (the kind that take your leg and eat it) and deep.  A couple had even been marked by rangers as too deep to MIB!  After a few slips into hip deep mud I left the deep ones alone.