Day 182 Porongurup, WA

 We left the Mount Barker caravan park at the last possible moment today at 10am as we only had 20km to travel to our next destination that had a check-in time of midday.  To fill in time this morning we walked to the Mount Barker IGA and shopped a few essential items.  It didn't open until 8am so I stayed in bed until the last possible moment.  It's cold and showery again today so my warm bed was the place to be.

Mount Barker Museum beside the Caravan Park

In my research of Porongorup I had spotted a tea room close to the caravan park so I suggested to Philip that we stop there to fill in time until we could check in to the caravan park.  Porongorup is a very small village with a population of just 370 and most of those people live outside the village.  There is just one shop in the village and that is the tearoom, so we had no trouble finding it 😂

I ordered a Devonshire tea while Philip had coffee and a giant Anzac biscuit.  It was bloody delicious and the scones were piping hot.  We sat over our morning tea as long as we possibly could but when the proprietors cleared away all our crockery we knew it was time to leave.....

Thankfully the owners of the Porongorup Caravan Park were sympathetic to our early check-in and we were quickly shown to our van site.  It is a terrific park that has been shown a lot of love.  The gardens are full of fragrant flowers and the camp kitchen is more like somebody's lounge room.  The owners light the fireplace inside here every evening to make it warm and inviting for the campers.

We are here for six nights as there is a lot of hikes that we want to try and complete.  Mind you most of them are Class 4 so it will be a mammoth effort if we complete any!  One thing that we will definitely do though is the Granite Sky Walk that is a walkway that hugs the side of a granite rock.  We have to ascend to a height of 670 metres and scramble over granite rocks and then climb a ladder but according to the brochures, the views that we will get from here are worth the effort.

There are also a few tourist drives around the Stirling Ranges that will be good for the days when it is raining and according to the BOM there are a few of them coming our way.  Albany is just 30km from us so if we get bored we can also head there for some indoor tourist activities (although we will be staying there in a couple of weeks) and I wouldn't mind heading back to Mount Barker because we never got to do the Mount Barker Lookout (too cloudy).  So there is quite a bit on our agenda.