Wednesday 27 July 2022
Photos courtesy of Amanda, Philip and Erika
We had a beautiful winters day for this varied coastal walk. It was sunny and warm with nary a cloud in the sky. We were to find however that the rain on the previous day, and days before that, had made many of the inland tracks very wet underfoot.
Not long after our start, as we made our way to North Beach, we were surprised to find that Willinga Lake entrance had recently opened to the sea. This necessitated removal of shoes and socks and finding a shallow enough place to wade across.
Once on the other side we continued to the end of North Beach, then up through the bush and out to Nuggan Point. A group of board riders had gathered on the point to take advantage of the powerful surf conditions; together with several photographers with large zoom lenses, ready to capture the surfers in action.
From Nuggan Point we headed inland along the waterlogged track, down onto Meroo Beach, and followed the beach northward. At the end of the beach we passed Meroo Lake (extremely full due to the recent wet weather) and stopped on the rocks for morning tea. After morning tea we left the rocks and took an eroded wet track (more of a cascade) up onto Meroo Head and paused at the lookout to admire the beautiful view. Then further along the track and down the steps to Termeil Beach.
At the northern end of Termeil Beach we reached Termeil Lake and Termeil Point. Again we were surprised to find that Termeil Lake entrance had also recently opened to the sea. Luckily, since we were heading back from this point, that did not cause us any problem.
We took an inland route back south behind the dunes, meandering through the banksias and burrawangs that had recovered well after the bushfires. Before returning to Termeil Beach we had lunch at a bench near the carpark. After that we retraced our steps over Meroo Head and along Meroo Beach. Rather than return via Nuggan Point we started to take the track inland to Willinga Lake but soon found the track covered with a significant depth of water, so we made our way through the scrub onto North Beach.
At the end of North Beach we waded back through the narrow Willinga Lake entrance and walked along the road to our cars at Bawley Beach carpark.
Philip