Hiking Dookanelly to Possum Springs -

Felling great and pretty excited to have hit two weeks on the track heading from Dookanelly to Possum Springs today.

We were up early and ready to go by 6am keen to get underway. Enjoying our boiled eggs for breakfast finishing them today.

Thinking about doing a double hut tomorrow at this stage. Always check around camp before leaving, not forgot anything no rubbish left behind.

Morning magic

The birds are singing and the air is alive with nature.

Signage was a little interesting in this section and we were thankful to have maps.me also some common sense having looked at the map that you follow the river. We go there and was very impressed with the reasonably new suspension bridge awaiting us at the Murray river.

New replaces old

It is always sad when natural disasters claim an important part of history.

The new river foot suspension bridge is a replacement of a beautiful old Long Gully wooden bridge 12km down stream following the January 2015 Lower Hotham fires.

Very sad, the old steam trains used to go across it. Good to see that this will not be so easily lost and at a cost of over $800,000 that is a good thing!

Losing yourself in the bush

Other than the fact, that at some point today you pass under a conveyor belt for the mining being done by Alcoa in this area, the bush is magnificent.

Just after you pass under the conveyor too, there is a lovely hill waiting for you lol.

It is atop this hill that my mobile phone went ballistic, which is never a good thing and you mind automatically goes to family and their well being.

In this particular instance, it was to be the end of our beloved Bibbulmun track adventure.

Things outside your control

So when preparing for a through hike, months of preparations and planning you take the time to prepare for all possible situations that may arise and try your best to put in place a contingency plan to ensure a safe, sickness, injury free journey. You do not think you are preparing for a global pandemic!

To say we were upset, disappointed and slightly (?) frustrated, to find out we must remove ourselves from the track. Without injury, through no fault of our own, you can only imagine how we were felling.

Unfortunately, we are all only too aware of the many plans and lives upset by what is still an ongoing COVID19 situation.

The regions within Western Australia were shutting down and restricted movement between them meant we could potentially not get back to our rig (motorhome) if we needed to be removed for whatever reason.

On top of that, the smaller towns that we pass through on the track, would want to retain what goods and food they had for their residents. Potentially they could be fearful of any newcomers, irrespective of us having had no contact with others, fulltime on a bush trail.

It is for this reason with very heavy hearts, a few tears too, we made the decision to leave the track. We were collected by a good friend, who immediately drove down to collect us, which required us to back track to a suitable collection point, before the lockdown commenced.

We are still extremely grateful for this wonderful act of generosity.

You all are very aware of what then followed, life is always an adventure and this is no different!