Day 1 Perth to The Breakaways

Saturday, 21st November 2015

We came across Coujinup Track on our Dunn’s Track run back in April 2015 and when we got back from Alice Springs in Sept, booked a week’s holiday in November to do it and here we are.

About a week before we were due to leave two very bad bush fires started by lightning ravaged the Esperance and Norseman regions with 4 people sadly loosing their lives while fleeing the fires. Roads were closed heading north to Norseman and west to Esperance. We kept a close watch on the fires as our trip could put us in the vicinity of them and we may have needed to take another route. Fire watches were upgraded to catastrophic and downgraded to watch and act back again as the fire services bravely and tirelessly fought to control the larger fire in the Esperance area; the smaller fires further north were controlled and presented no threat. Despite the unfortunate loss of lives and crops and farmland as well as flora and fauna the fire services did a great job in bringing the fires under control without further loss of lives.

So, here we are, it’s 7.00 am Saturday and we’re on our way, first stop Hyden and we’ll make camp at The Breakaways on the new Hyden to Norseman Road. This is a good spot to make camp with a pit toilet, BBQ’s, tables and some protection from the weather.

After filling up at Hyden we continued along the Hyden – Lake King Road until we came to the point where the Holland Track crosses the Highway where we turned to come in from the southern end and arrive at Emu Rocks, another good camp spot. We’ve camped here three times before but today we’re just passing through. We’ve never seen any emus here either but today was different. The track is lined on both sides with dense shrubs and as emus do, one just darted out in front of us, luckily we avoided him. These guys have no road sense whatsoever. A bit further along we spied a female Western Gray kangaroo with her joey feeding in the shrubs and dad a bit further down the road.

By 3.30pm we pull in to The Breakaways.

It really is a peaceful spot, listening to and watching nature go about its daily business. As we relaxed we saw a Crested Bicycle Dragon about 3mts from where we were sitting, a Red Backed Kingfisher in a nearby tree had caught a small lizard and a couple of Rainbow Bee Eaters flew about from tree to tree.

Now, after enjoying all the wonders of nature it was time to prepare tea. That’s when we saw the litter left by previous campers, an empty bottle of alcohol. Maybe they were too drunk to remember to take their rubbish out with them. Littering is a disgusting habit anywhere but it always looks worse when you’re in a pristine spot like this. Being glass, it’s prone to being broken meaning animals or other campers could be injured or if knocked over small animals could get caught in the bottle. C’mon fellow campers – please take your rubbish with you.

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