31st August - 1st September

Day 22 & 23 - Gregory Brook to Donnelly River Village

Thursday 5:20 am. Last night the rain absolutely bucketed down perhaps more than 50 mm. Gregory Brook itself had become audibly louder. This was to be a cruel introduction to the water bush. The water bush is of the pea family and has a small fat leaf with incredible water retention properties. After rain the weight of the water bends the stems across the path with the gazillions of drops of water ready to magnify the effects of the previous nights rain 100 fold. It didn't matter that the sun was shining and the sky was cloud free, even with rain coats on the water bush found every conceivable way to deliver water through our packs and clothing.

I was amazed by the change in the forest. Now we were observing the Karri gums (Eucalyptus diversicolor). These giant trees I think are the third tallest tree in the world (behind Californian Redwoods and E. regnans). They were impressive and kept me looking up. Looking up is probably why I didn't notice Rone's sunglasses anywhere on the path which he had lost after the Brockman highway due to water bush. 

Today was a great walk along the Donnelly river amongst the majestic Karri forests. At one stage I caught up with Rone at Willow Springs a lovely picnic area - he wanted to know if I had seen his glasses and then he was off again.

At 1:25 pm  we arrived together at Donnelly River Village. I decided to get some solitude and so I decided to stay two nights to let Rone move on ahead of me. Rone now had plans to get to Walpole by mid September so he could get a bus up to a Rave party for the weekend. So Rone moved on the next day. I decided to book a room for the night at Karri Valley Resort on the 5th of September so yes at DRV we realised that our plans were radically different. The owners of DRV (the old town is now a holiday joint owned by 2 businesses) offered to take me to Manjimup on Friday to stock up on food so I had another reason to stay 2 nights.

I had conquered the Northern Section!

Day 24 - DRV to Tom Road

Rone is pictured here feeding the 28's