2nd  September

Day 24 - DRV to Tom Road

The first day hiking without Rone. Whilst Rone was making his way to Tom Road on the first of September I finished my third book on the walk. The first book was TOPAZ by Leon Uris, the second "The San Andreas" by Alistair Mclean and now I had finished "The Partner" by John Grisham. Kevin caught up with me and his brother in law Jim had driven over from Bridgetown and we had a bit of a party in the old school. Before setting out in the morning we had conformation of sub zero temperatures with ice crystals all over Jim's car.

Rone had got in the habit of using the expression Bravo for any reason towards me. On the way out to Tom Road camp site I bumped into the "Sassy sisters" who had spent the previous night with Rone. As soon as they saw me they yelled out Bravo Davo - an expression I was to hear and read for the next week as Rone passed this on to people out in front of me. 

At Tom Road the track rejoined a most lovely section of the river again. I built up a lovely stash of firewood and started reading "Pelican Brief" also by John Grisham which was found in the box containing the red and green books. Kevin soon rocked up.

There were some nice tracks along the riverbank from Tom Road hut which led to a lovely bend in the river framed with big granite boulders. When it got dark Kevin showed me a Marron (my first sighting of one) near the camp site. Kevin was easy going, in his fifties, married and doing the walk end to end as an introduction to serious bush walking. He was pretty well prepared for someone who was doing this sort of thing for the first time. His only setback was pre-planning his food drops as his diet was fairly repetitious whereas I could try new foods when I stocked up at each town.

Getting to sleep was pretty difficult because unfortunately like Rone, Kevin was a snorer and a loud one at that. My earplugs were not enough and they hurt my ears if I rolled on to them. I resolved to use my tent the following night.

The following photo depicts the elaborate preparation involved for a Bibulmun camp fire. The piece of wood in my hand is Jarrah.

Day 25 - Tom Road to Boarding House