We drove from Bremer Bay to Esperance today, only a couple of hours on the road, and found somewhere to check in. The first thing we noticed about Esperance was that there were many islands off the coast, apparently these are known as the Recherche Archipelago and are made up of 105 islands and 1500 islets spread over 270 kms of coastline. We were in the Seafront Caravan Park so walked across the road and followed the foreshore into town. We approached the Tanker Jetter (hoping to say g’day to Sammy the Seal as advised by many brochures) but unfortunately parts of the jetty were missing and we weren’t able to access it, probably why council was in the process of closing this area off for renovations. It was another windy day, but the fresh air was good and so was the company. While in town we found the bakery – and this was a good one with all that you could want, bread items, cakes, biscuits, hot foods like hamburgers, chinese, hot chips, etc. and cold lunch items like sandwiches, rolls, sushi, rice paper rolls, etc, not to mention good coffees and great slushies – it had all bases covered and we were all happy! After stopping for some afternoon tea we made the walk back to the van, it was good to get a jacket on. The kids went to the park for a play and made some new friends while we sat back and enjoyed a beer/wine or two.
The following day was a cracker –
we had hot weather! We quickly packed
the car and took off for Cape Le Grand National Park, about 50kms east of
Esperance. This national park and
Esperance claim to have some of Australia’s best beaches and we wanted to make
our own minds up on this one. On our way
into the park we saw something that we hadn’t seen for quite a while – a herd
of cows huddled in a big dam trying to cool down – that proved it was pretty
warm. We grabbed our information
brochure at the entrance and drove in.
We first pulled over at the base of Frenchman Peak for a look and after
discussion decided to come back later to climb it. For now we were going to head to the beaches
and enjoy some sunshine. As we drove
toward the stunning beach of Lucky Bay (named by Matthew Flinders when
circumnavigating Australia in 1802) the sky was slowly changing and we could
see a little bit of grey approaching. We
wandered down to the beach and we could only see one older couple that had just
hopped in for a swim. The sun was still
shining so we jumped in and joined them.
The kids were a bit reluctant as the water felt pretty cold at roughly
17 degrees but Josh chased them down and forced them in. We all commented how the ocean water wasn’t
very salty, similar to Greens Pool back before Denmark. It must have something to do with being so
close to Antarctica? While the weather
was still warm we decided to walk one of the tracks – from Lucky Bay to Thistle
Cove. The kids grabbed their water bags
and off we set. It was pretty warm while
we were walking and Sami obviously didn’t have enough breakfast as she wasn’t
feeling very energetic while we walked, constantly needing to stop. We passed along a lot of coastal heath and
low granite rocks before reaching Thistle Cove, taking around 40 minutes. It was a very pretty walk and the kids
favourite part was watching lots of small brown and yellow striped lizards
scurrying across the rocks. They were
trying to catch one but by geez the lizards were much faster than the
kids. After finishing the walk we drove
down onto the sand of Lucky Bay and parked right near the coffee trailer, and
what a great set-up they had. One of the
best views along the coastline, but accommodating for their customers as they
had chairs, sand toys and lots of drinks and sweets for all the families. Of course we grabbed a coffee, hot chocolate
and cold drinks to assist his business and then settled in to make our lunch
and enjoy the view. The only downfall
was that the wind was blowing a gale by this stage but we just used the car as
a wind block. The weather had come over
very grey by the time we finished lunch and rain was definitely on its way so
we packed up and headed to Hellfire Bay for a walk around the rocks before
heading for home – missing the big climb of Frenchman Peak (although West Mount
Barren was quite a bit higher). Back in
Esperance, we headed for shelter in the way of the Esperance Museum. It was a good museum with a whole variety of
things including boats, bikes, cars and a train as well as almost every type of
old thing imaginable from phones to petrol pumps, type writers to pianos,
clothes to sewing machines and from bibles to medals… you name it, I think they
probably had it. We spent a few hours
here looking around and the kids didn’t seem to mind as they had two connecting
phones which the kids wanted to take home for their bedrooms. Back at the van the kids had a couple of cold
hours of fun at the playground with four kids travelling from Ulladulla.
Day three at Esperance we did the
Great Coastal Drive which spans west of the actual town and takes you along
some gorgeous beaches. Again it was just
a shame that the weather wasn’t better to make the most of these beaches. Our first stop was at Rotary Lookout then
onto some of the lovely beaches like West Beach, Blue Haven, Fourth Beach, the
7km long Twilight Beach (voted WA’s no. 1 beach a few years back) and Ten Mile
Beach. Further along we pulled atop the
hill at Esperance wind farm and the kids read up on fossil fuels and global
warming before heading into town. We
called into the bakery – a late lunch and afternoon tea was enjoyed, Josh
nearly needed rolling out of there! We
wandered about town walking off some of the treats before returning to the
warmth of the van for the afternoon.
We were once again behind in school work so spent our final day in Esperance tidying up lots of loose ends... it was not my favourite day but some things just have to be done.
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