Lano to Joondalup

I woke up early enough to see the sun rise over Lancelin one last time, then used the remainder of our internet credit to check the wind forecast for Margaret River before starting to pack up all our gear.  It was looking very promising, indeed - 25 knots from the southwest with a 3 metre swell running.  With a forecast like that, we couldn’t get moving south fast enough for my liking.

As I stumbled around in the cool, early morning air (after staying up til 3 to watch United beat Arsenal 3-1 at the Emirates), I managed to pack up all of our gear and load the van bound for Joondalup.  The plan was to arrive in the suburb north of Perth, drop Dan at the hospital to check out his sprained ankle to make sure he’d be back on his feet in a couple of weeks, then pick up a hire car, swing by the bank and get on the road for Margaret River.  Shouldn’t take more than a few hours, right?  Wrong.

We pulled up at the door of the emergency room and Dan hobbled off to the reception while I unloaded two massive kite bags, a surfboard, a cooler full of beer (a prerequisite when in Australia, regardless of the distance you’re traveling), Dan’s duffel bag, Dan’s computer bag, my camera gear and a few other bags I’d hastily packed that morning, dumping them onto the pavement leading into the hospital doors.  I found a nice spot in the shade, pulled out a magazine and settled down to wait for Dan to get the all clear from the Joondulup Hospital osteopath.  It looked like it was going to be a long wait…  Everyone who walked past my street-side gypsy encampment couldn’t resist passing comment… “Odd place to camp, mate.”  “Not gonna catch much in the way of waves there mate!” Each one funnier than the last…

After sitting on the pavement for an hour, one of the nurses came outside to tell me Dan had broken his ankle and I might as well move everything into the hospital while we waited for him to see a consultant.  I groaned, asked if she was joking about the break, but obviously didn’t have to wait for a second invitation to get out of the sun and into the AC.  The nurse was really helpful and reassuring.  She had gone to Bellaire High School in Houston and had already struck up a great rapport with Dan.  We were lucky enough to have caught the hospital on the first day of a brand new six-month rotation of recently qualified doctors.  It has to be said, the nurses looked as excited as we were at the prospect. 

So, after spending the last 12 months in various hospitals around the UK, this was not the auspicious start to our two month West Australian kitesurfing trip I had anticipated.  No matter now, though. 

Dan dealt with the news quite well and seemed to be enjoying telling anyone who would listen that he’d broken his ankle doing some gnarly kitesurfing in Lancelin.  As the hours got higher on the clock, so did the height of his jump. 20, 30, 40, 50 feet…I think by the time we got seen he’d done a 120 foot, double handle-pass kiteloop or something along similar lines…  The only people who were getting a slightly different version of this story were the hospital doctors (for obvious reasons – the main one being insurance coverage).  The version for them was that he’d fallen off a kerb, into a drain and broken his ankle.  The collective looks of the medical staff suggested that they didn’t believe a word of it.  Particularly when we told them there wasn’t even alcohol involved.

So shortly after Dan was discharged from the hospital with crutches and a temporary cast, I managed to get us a hire car and we were en route to Margaret River with only rush-hour traffic and a few hundred km standing in our way…