Beacon. That’s the answer, for anyone keeping score at home.
The forecast — and does anyone actually trust these things anymore? — reckoned on 32 degrees, howling wind, and rain. Charming.
Bugger that, we thought. The last thing we need is to be wrestling a caravan across the Burakin–Wialki Road in a gale and ending up parked in a ditch instead of a campground somewhere interesting. So we did what any sensible nomad does: threw a dart at tomorrow’s forecast instead, which promised cooler and calmer. Sold. We’re staying put.
Which left us with the age-old road-trip question: now what?
Between the slushy weather warning and the fact that my feet now without shoes resemble weather balloons, we decided it was time to break out the water shoes. Every travel influencer on the internet swears by theirs — usually right after someone’s sent them a free pair — so Kay and I did the sensible thing and actually paid for ours. Novel concept, we know.
Big mistake. We’ve just spent the better part of an hour sweltering in the sun, armed with nothing more high-tech than a corkscrew (sadly, no wine involved), digging pebbles out of our Aleaders. Turns out nobody mentioned the paper-thin soles, or the fact that the tread seems specifically engineered to hoover up every sharp stone in Western Australia and lodge it directly in the drainage holes. Every. Single. Hole.
So there we sat, Beacon shimmering gently in the heat around us, performing minor surgery on our footwear with a wine accessory, wondering how two people can be this bad at buying shoes.
Still — better a pebble-picking afternoon in the sun than a ditch on the Burakin–Wialki Road. We’ll take the corkscrew. Any chance I’d get away with a snifter of port?
Life on the road is never dull.
Leave a Comment