4th November 2022
Albany to Stirling Range Retreat
Before we leave Albany Jo wants to find something to give Leah and thinks something with an Aborigine design would be ideal. After breakfast and checking out of the hotel we walk up York Street again looking for a present, and despite popping into one or two shops cannot find the perfect gift. I remember there's a tourist office somewhere along York Street and spot it (not where I was expecting to find it) and we go in in the hope that they may sell something suitable. They do not, but as with the tourist office in Walpole the person we speak to is very helpful. She tells of a shop just off York Street further up the hill. She also gives us information about the Granite Skywalk which we hope to climb on our way to the Stirling Range. In a back-handed compliment she says she hopes she's as fit as us at our age! (I estimate that she is around 50.)
We find the shop the lady in the tourist office has suggested (with a little help from a delivery driver), only to discover a hand written notice in the window saying 'gone for coffee, back in 15 minutes'. Luckily the shopkeeper is drinking her coffee outside a cafe a few doors down the street and comes rushing to let us in. The shop is fairly bare apart from some expensive looking paintings, but Jo suddenly spots the ideal item, a travel wallet decorated with Aboriginal motifs.
There is one major attraction we aim to visit on our way to Stirling Range, the Granite Skywalk at Castle Rock. This is a reasonable uphill walk and when we finally get almost to the top there is an awkward looking scramble over some large granite boulders before we can reach the Skywalk. We decide that discretion is better than falling off a mountain and decide to give the Skywalk a miss, settling for the almost as good 'Karri Lookout'. The Karri Lookout can only be about 25m lower than the Granite Walkway so we don't think we are missing too much.
The Stirling Range Retreat is a little different from the hotels we have been staying in so far, and one we are, literally, totalled unprepared for. That's not to say it's uncomfortable or unclean, just a bit more basic. Most of the Retreat is a campsite with 'chalets' such as ours to fill in the gaps. We check-in and ask about where to eat in the evening. Well, there's the cafe opposite, but that closes at 4:00 (i.e. in about 30 minutes) or the pub at Borden, about 30km away! The cafe also has a shop and the Retreat reception has some basics, including frozen sausages and frozen bread. Having unloaded the car and familiarised ourselves with the room, which has self-catering facilities, such as a hotplate and frying pan, we decide to head for the cafe to buy something for supper and breakfast: a can of baked beans, a packet of Dorset cereal, some Red Leicester cheese, apples and milk (possibly plus a few other items). The one thing they don't have is butter but the cafe owner gets us four or five individual packets from his stock which he doesn't charge us for. We take our shopping back to our room and return to reception to get some sausages and bread. On arrival the lady running reception (and co-owner of the site with her husband) tells us we have saved her the job of tracking us down - there is a power outage and she lends us an LED lamp. She says the power failure is widespread (over 100s of km) and Western Power say power should be restored about 9:00pm. Reception and the communal kitchen and showers are powered by a backup generator and batteries and our hot water should be OK. We buy the sausages and bread and pay using our card which seems unaffected by the power cut.
Since we have no power in our chalet, we take our supplies to the communal kitchen, and Jo sets about cooking on the gas stove. We had intended to take the Leeuwin Estate wine back to the UK with us, but Jo decides that drinking it here would be a much better option. The sausages and beans don't quite match the standards of the previous evenings, but we chat with a very pleasant couple, both now Australian from Perth, but the lady originally from South Africa and the chap from Germany. I think they are amused by our choice of wine to accompany sausage and beans...
The power is still off and we read by the light of the LED lamp.
