Esperance

We spent three lovely, although overcast days at Western Australia's most south eastern town. We arrived at the caravan park called Bathers Paradise to pouring rain and had to put the van on the site. Needless to say within 5 minutes I was soaked. This park is the best one to stay at, the people are very friendly and helpful and it is only one block back from the walking/ bike track that runs all the way along the foreshore into town. We decided to hire a car again as there are some very scenic drives that can be done as well as exploring the national park.

Well, we though the car hire in Margaret River was cheap at $37 a day this was even better at $27.50 and Steve came and picked us up from the caravan park and dropped us back at the end of our hire.

Esperance is romantically dubbed the 'Bay of Isles' and has had its beaches declared Australia's whitest. So we decided to drive the Great Ocean Drive, a circular loop drive 40 kms long and passes some of the region's spectacular beaches, coastal scenery, lookouts of the whole area, wind farms and the pink lake. 

First stop, coffee.

   A small brake in the weather, although still cold and windy, for us to enjoy coffee by the Tanker Jetty. Esperance has redeveloped the whole of the foreshore and it is beautiful for enjoying a stroll, bike ride or just veging and drinking coffee.

     Part of the redevelopment near the jetty.

    Esperance foreshore on the right and the port facilities on the left. This is the only port in the south-east of WA. It handled over 14 million tonnes of product involving 200 ships last year, including wheat, barley, oats, lupins,peas and minerals.

And then we checked out these beaches that are supposed to be to die for and they were. Around every bend was another beautiful white sand, clear water beach. These guys down here have so many to choose from and all within 20 minutes of town. Of course I took so many pics, too many to choose from to show you.

    This is West Beach, the first one only three kms from town. This was taken from a spot called Rotary Lookout which gives you panoramic views of the area.

Just about to leave and my camera ran out of battery, oh no rookie error, so we were only just out of town so went back to get other camera and rescue the washing from the incoming weather.

   We turned the van into a Chinese laundry.

Back to the tour of the area and the next beach being Blue Have, then Salmon, Fourth Beach(don't know why they couldn't come up with a more inventive name for the fourth beach out of town), Twilight Beach next then Nine Mile, Ten Mile and Eleven Mile. All beautiful.

   Depending on the aspect of the beach some were a lot rougher than others.

    This is the stunning Twilight Beach which has won the best beach in WA award. With its crystal clear waters and snow white sand, it was a winner for us.

   As Twilight Beach curves to the south west it becomes increasingly protected by its orientation and two offshore rocks. This was a very windy day and this is very protected.

    This is Observatory Hill and is accessed by a large number of stairs. Mez was doing her best to get out of the wind and the cold.

    Even the selfie wasn't working properly as the wind was blowing the camera cord into the shot.

    The $27.50 a day beast that was perfect for us although not so squeezie up front.

     200 metres further down the end of Ten Mile Beach is Esperance's 'free' beach for the naturalists amongst us. Would have frozen our 'bits' off on this day if we ventured there. 

Didn't do the loop past wind farms and the pink lake headed back to town for a very late lunch. Stunning coastline everywhere, imagine how good it would be in the summer months.

Day two of Esperance and the use of our supper cheap car rental. Today we headed to Cape Le Grand National Park located approximately half and hour east of Esperance. It is one of WA's best known and most spectacular national parks. Driving through the national park was picturesque with farmland as well as natural bushland all blending together.

    Native and farm animals at home with each other sharing the richness of the land.

This national park has reputably the most beautiful beaches on earth such as Lucky Bay, Helfire Bay and Thistle Cove and so we went on the trek to check this out.

   This is Lucky Bay on a dull day, they are doing heaps of foreshore improvements so it was all a bit messy but besides all that it has spectacular white sand( the beach is continually named Australia's whitest beach) and the bluest of water.

    You will always find the locals sunbaking on the foreshore enjoying the warmth of the dried seaweed at this time of year. There was a family of four all very content to let us sit amongst them and take pics.

    Lucky Bay's farewell committee ready to say 'see you later'.

  Whistling Rock at Thistle Cove actually did whistle in the wind, one advantage of being there on a windy day.

    Helfire Bay wasn't too hellish due to the wind direction today but it was just magic in its remoteness, just gorgeous.

This is a very beautiful part of our world and one that needs a revisit in a warmer month to take full advantage of the best beaches in Australia. Seeing the thousands upon thousands of kms of coastline with undoubtedly the best beaches in the world I don't know how they pick one as the best out of them all, I want to walk in their shoes and find out what can possibly make one heaps better than a million others. We don't have to go to far in this world of ours to find perfection on our coastline it is everywhere.

This next pic is a little left of centre. Through our travels in the southern part of WA on many remote properties we have seen some very unusual letter boxes and have missed taking a pic of them, however, on our way back from the national park we came across this one.

    This letter box is special but if only we had got a pic of some of the other very inventive ones along the way.

Esperance is a lovely part of the our great land, somewhere you could easily spend a few weeks fishing, swimming, surfing and just hanging out in a relatively untouched part of the globe. ( but come when it is warm weather)

Next stop on the journey - The Nullarbor.