The last two weeks of December 2024, one of the bastards of the Frisian Coast Trail solo hiked the coastal section of the Bibbulmun Track in the state of West Australia. It must be the coast, of course. This section is the stretch between the town of Albany and that of Walpole. Only halfway through this two-week hike would there be some civilization at the town of Denmark. The trail marker sign is the Waugal – see featured image – and a symbol of the indigenous First Nations people of Australia. It stands for the protector of fresh drinking water and of new life. During this hike, the bastard experienced a moment when past, present, private, work, coincidence, and causality all converged. Sounds maybe a bit dreamy and light-headed for a level-headed Frisian bastard, but judge for yourself. It is what the path provides, including memorable encounters.
On the trail
Already when planning the track, the bastard was concerned about how to manage the crossing of the estuary of the Wilson Inlet. Seasonally, the sandbar separating Lake Wilson from the Indian Ocean is breached, and the lake discharges its accumulated water into the ocean, like pulling the plug from a bathtub. Then hikers have to wade through the estuary. The problem, however, is that fording the estuary is not always possible. Wading through the gully might be too dangerous when the water is too high, the currents too strong, and the sand too soft, almost like quicksand. You do not want to fall over and be flushed out into the sharky ocean known for its merciless rips. So, serious danger to reckon with.
Getting reliable and up-to-date information about the situation was also extremely difficult because only the occasional hiker walks the Bibbulmun Track this time of year, commonly shortened to the Bibb. It was summer, and temperatures easily rise to 35 degrees Celsius in the shade, with real risks of bushfires. The only thing the bastard knew for sure was that you had to cross the estuary at low tide. Contrary to the North Sea and Wadden Sea coast, the cycle of the tide is only one high and one low tide daily.
On December 24, the bastard arrived at the camp spot on the peninsula of Nullaki. Like all the days before, the bastard was all alone, except for the many aggressively biting marsh flies, and the occasional kangaroo, emu, tiger snake, or bobtail lizard. You could tell that not many hikers walked this part of the trail anyway, probably to avoid the unpredictable crossing at the Wilson Inlet. From camp spot Nullaki, the next stop would be the town of Denmark, after a week of tramping through the remote bush. At Denmark, the bastard had booked a room at B&B The Windrose, where he had also delivered in advance a parcel with freeze-dried meals for the second leg of the hike, another seven days. Sleeping in a bed at Christmas instead of on an inflatable mattress and in a miniature tent, and a hot shower, was something to look forward to after almost a week of sweating in the sometimes soaring heat.
It would be about five hours walking from camp spot Nullaki to the estuary. The additional difficulty was that low tide would be at 07:00 o’clock in the morning. This would mean the bastard would have to pitch his tent on the shores of the estuary the next day and wait another day for the tide before he could cross the inlet. However, there would be no fresh water at the estuary. In total, the bastard could carry 4 liters of water. That itself would be enough to make it to Denmark, but not if the estuary turned out not to be forded. Then backtracking would be the only option left, back to the fresh water tank at the camp spot Nullaki for refilling his bottles, and additionally circumventing Lake Wilson, too. In total about 50 kilometers. Too much with a heavy pack. The alternative was to stay again the night at Nullaki and circumvent the lake the next day, but that would be a terrible drag. So, what to do? Choices, choices.
The bastard decided to continue hiking during the night, leaving Nullaki at around 01:30. He would be around low tide at the estuary. If things were too dangerous, he would turn back and stay the night at Nullaki anyhow, but at least he did not lose a day. So, an early sleep was in order, and at 08:00 o’clock, the bastard crawled into his tent for some sleep. Barely had he laid down when a hiker showed up in the dark—the first hiker during the hike thus far. Why now? Farewell to sleep. The guy was German and had already been working in Australia for about a year; he wanted to stay here because Europe was becoming a “bad place.” He would not be crossing the estuary but would circumvent the lake right away and hoped to get a lift to Denmark once reaching the highway to town.
Around 01:30 o’clock, the bastard had packed his bag and was on his way in the dead of night, leaving the happily snoring German in his tent behind. On his head a small flashlight. It felt very ominous and eerie all alone in the pitch-dark night, with zero light pollution. Keeping track was hard with only a flashlight, especially because it was not always a well-trodden trail, even overgrown for many kilometers. The bastard missed the track once, which cost him an additional hour. A thing that added to the ominous and eerie feeling was that during the first hours there was constant thunder and lightning; fortunately, it did not start to rain. Also, several times the bastard heard loud noises close to him of something big going through the bush, not knowing what it was. Only at dusk did he see what it was: kangaroos jumping off. On top of that, it was too dark to spot snakes, especially since they lived abundantly along the overgrown, swampy lakeside where the trail forces itself through the plants and trees for hours on end.
The most uncomfortable and creepy part of the night walk was the incalculable number of spider webs the bastard ran into. Impossible to detect in the night with only a flashlight and a few meters of vision. Of course, he tried to clear most of them with his walking poles but it were just too many. It must have been over a hundred webs smearing his face, with sometimes big spiders dangling on the broad rim of his hat. Their six or ten eyes looking angry at the bastard for ruining their works. The juice of the webs felt like acid on the bastard’s skin after hours of walking through spider traps. His black Akubra hat had turned white of the webs. One gets used to everything; it is easier said than done.
Around 05:45, the bastard wrested himself from the spooky woods and the dark, and oversaw from the dunes the ocean and the dreaded estuary in the morning light, finally. Beautiful scenery. But nothing dreadful about it! There was a wide sand plain exposed during low tide, with even a man and woman who walked their dog and played with a frisbee. “Where had all the fuss been about?” he thought. The deepest water the bastard had to ford was just below his knees. Lovely fresh, cold sea water for his aching feet with quite a few blisters. Although the weather was grey and windy – not summery at all – the bastard felt happy to have arrived in Denmark. Because he was one day ahead of schedule, he could not check in at the B&B The Windrose; it was fully booked. Instead, he found a spot at the campground Ocean Beach. At least there was a hot shower and a common cooking area with a couch to relax on. That was already a lot of luxury.
In the town of Denmark
The bastard posted on Facebook that he stayed at Ocean Beach and that the town of Denmark was still another 9 kilometers away. He had tried to get a taxi, but these did not operate in the area because it was not viable. Neither was there any form of public transport, nor bicycles to rent at the campground. He had loved to go to town for some coffee, a beer maybe, and some shopping at the supermarket. After almost 40 kilometers of hiking in the last 24 hours, another 18 clicks would be no fun. Almost immediately, he received a message from a woman who offered him a ride to town. Amazing! Half an hour later, Paula picked him up and drove him to town. After doing groceries at the IGA supermarket, also for Christmas the next day when shops would be closed, Paula and the bastard had coffee and something to eat on a terrace. In the distance, the bastard saw the German guy from Nullaki stumbling through town. Just like a sacred cow, just arrived, probably.
Paula, a woman in her mid-sixties, the bastard guessed, loved hiking herself, too. Something she had only started to do not too long ago. But she enjoyed it more and more. That was why she thought: “Let’s give this wanderer a ride.” Shortly after both were seated on the terrace, a friend of Paula passed by. They wished each other a happy Christmas, and Paula explained, without paying too much attention to her words, that she had picked me up. “Well done, Paula. You go, girl!” replied her friend with a big laugh. We all laughed.
Paula, a nurse by profession, had grown up “in the desert,” as she formulated it. In a former mining village, there she had lived closely with the First Nations people. Now, headlines in Australia are about a second minor belonging to the First Nations people who has died within a year due to conditions in juvenile prisons. “A big thing here, and a big investigation,” she said. “Not only because of prison conditions, but also because they were both Indigenous Australians, who are unjustly over-represented in the criminal system.” Paula explained how hopeless the futures are for the young people of the Indigenous Australians in the remote towns in the desert. Then Paula asked the bastard what he was doing for a living. “I inspect juvenile detention centers in the Netherlands,” the bastard answered.
In the city of Perth
A week later the bastard finished his hike at the small town of Walpole. Here his Australian cousin picked him up, and he spent a few days at his place in the city of Perth. It was the first time the bastard met his family in Australia, a family who emigrated after the war from Indonesia and Holland to Australia. His cousin organized a dinner for the whole family for the occasion, and so it came that the bastard met the husband of one of his second-cousins. He happened to work as counsellor of the children in a juvenile prison.
Suddenly, the bastard was exchanging experiences of work about overcrowded prisons, lack of personnel, etc. Part of the core of his work. But the bastard also learned from the husband of his second-cousin how the children and youth of the Indigenous Australians were almost pushed into a life of crime and continuously reoffended and returned to prison. Prisons that were far removed from their hometowns in the far north or interior, and once free, they would return to the same toxic and hopeless environment with zero chance to change the path of their lives. The bastard told the husband of his second cousin about his encounter with Paula in Denmark and about the death of two youngsters. He replied that he had known the guys personally and had worked with them. “What are the odds?” the bastard thought.
When the bastard went to bed, he was reminded of the trail marker of the Bibbulmun Track: the Waugal. The bright yellow triangles with the snaking snake. Part of the indigenous culture of the First Nations people. Symbol of fresh drinking water and of new life. At the same time, how serious was the new life of the same indigenous people crushed in Australia? How was it protected? Like the precious fresh water in a hot and dry landscape. “The Waugal is not only leading the way along the path, but also a constant reminder to consider the fate of the children of the Indigenous Australians,” the bastard concluded.
Note 1 – The Bibbulmun Track fits a series of coastal hikes of the Frisian Bastards to experience the regional maritime landscape and culture. Exactly where the Frisia Coast Trail is all about, too. For these reasons the bastards hiked in the south of Turkey (read our blog post The Old Man (and Woman) and the Sea – hiking the Lycian Way), the southwest of Wales (read our blog post Croeso i Gerddwyr – hiking the Pembrokeshire Coast Path), the Andalucian Coast to Coast Walk in the south of Spain (read our blog post Naranjas and Reservoir Dogs – hiking in Andalusia), and the Rota Vicentina annex Fisherman’s Trail in the southwest of Portugal (read our blog post Surf on someone else’s Turf – hiking the Rota Vicentina).
Note 2 – The wilderness of the Bibbulmun Track is to be taken seriously. Not only because being prepared for snake bites, which would be, in fact, a bit unfortunate because the risk is pretty small, but also because of bush fires. The Bibbulmun Track Foundation advices not to hike in summertime, which the bastard did. During the hike, there were two bushfires on the trail. Luckily one in a area where the bastard had passed through already, near Albany, and a small one in the Forest of the Giants that was extinguished quickly. Then the ocean. Sharks are not an immediate danger, but the rips are. The bastard passed the beach of Conspicuous Cliffs the day after two people had drowned, a girl and her father who had tried to rescue her. A rip had taken them into the ocean. A surfer could rescue only one person. Lastly, temperatures during summer get very high. Dehydration is also a serious risk. Nowhere before experienced the bastard how quick he dehydrated.
Note 3 – For the (twice) daily travel journal of the Bibbulmun Track on Facebook, click here. Pictures of the Bibbulmun Track on Facebook can be found here.
Further reading
Bibbulmun Track Foundation, Guidebook 7 Walpole (2023)
Bibbulmun Track Foundation, Guidebook 8 Denmark/Albany (2023)
Hennessy, A., Another Child Dies in Western Australian Youth Detention (2024)
Litter, R., Two people drown in holiday tragedy at Conspicuous Cliff beach, near Walpole, in WA (2024)
Lonely Planet, Perth & Fremantle (2019)
Lonely Planet, West Coast Australia (2024)
Lonely Planet experience, West Coast Australia (2022)
Wiki Series, Hiking and bushwalking tracks in Australia (2011)
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