Love Spring/Davies Loop and Boranup

Preparing our vegetable frittata for breakfast and lunch was challenging with cheeky bold magpies who would snatch a piece of food from right beside you. After breakfast, we ventured down a track near our campsite and gathered some gumnuts to hurl towards the magpies at future meal preparations. We also found a pile of firewood which we gathered with the help of our washing up pail. Unfortunately, the periodic rain prevented us from lighting a fire this evening as we had dinner in the car and retired to the tent at 7.38pm.

The forest was very burnt in 6.53km hike at Davies and Love Spring Road. An enormous bushfire ravaged and destroyed over 8000 hectares of forest, started 8 December last year and took 4 days to contain, and many more days to burn out. There was much regeneration where we walked today, but the devastation was still very apparent. Some giant karri trees have fallen, grass trees which require a bushfire to thrive have also succumbed some victims. It was rather infuriating to see the damages done and know this fire was deliberately lit. That and the litter on the 4WD tracks made me ashamed to be a human.

The Boranup Drive loop is a very well maintained compacted dirt road, and it was good to leave the burnt forest behind. We had an in-car picnic lunch on a side track. Grace spotted a very unusual orchid near the toilets by the lookout.

Margaret River Open Studios are on, so we chanced upon young Ben Edwards who does beautiful resin and wood serving boards and furniture.

We abandoned our hike towards the Boranup Beach after 1.5km of slow ascend on a 4WD track. We shall save this for another visit.

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