Friday 15th of July 2011 Kalgoorlie to Lucky Bay via Esperance

Friday 15^th of July 2011 Kalgoorlie to Lucky Bay via Esperance 450km

Happy 21^st Birthday to Tara, we hope you are having a happy, memorable birthday and enjoy all of your celebrations, love
you, thinking of you 🙂

We had a sleep in today woke around 6am and we were on the
road at 7am.   We had a good run through to Esperance, we pulled over near a park and had lunch around 12pm.  I am really enjoying just going into the van and making something fresh for lunch – can’t believe how much fun I am having and how easy it all is!

Went to the visitors centre, some quaint shops, bought
myself some thermal bed socks, never seen anything like them, looking forward to wearing them tonight.   Although, the
temp is quite warm today, around 21 – so hopefully not too cold tonight.

Then we went to a local fish shop to get some fish for tea,
bought some fresh snapper – just in case Greg doesn’t catch any this afternoon 🙂

We saw a car wash and Greg washed all the red dirt off the car and van – took ages and over $20 it was pretty dirty – but looks much cleaner now.

Then we headed for Cape Le Grand National Park, there are two spots we were interested in setting up camp for the night.   We went and checked out Cape Le Grand first, it had 15 individual camping spots surrounded by shrubs – so very sheltered and the beach overlooked the Recherche Archipelago (the largest group of Islands (105) in southern Australia).   We decided to go and check out Lucky Bay as well which was only 9 km away – glad we did, the
beach is a smaller version of Vivonne Bay on Kangaroo Island  – but dare I say it slightly more beautiful – it has the whitest sand I have ever seen and the water is a beautiful aqua colour.

After setting up the van we headed down to the beach, I took
photos and Greg did a spot of fishing (was a good job we bought some fish as there were no fish biting!!)   Greg has just come back to the van and said there is a kangaroo on the beach with its
joey, so I am off to check it out!

Wow you could not have scripted this better, down on the beach
feeding on the sea weed was a kangaroo and its joey – there was also a Willie Wagtail following the mother around then a big crow came and joined in – they all coexisted very happily together.   All
this, a magnificent beach and only us – bliss.

Took so many photos 🙂 With Greg’s help I am slowly working the camera out and beginning to really enjoy it.   Glad we got it before we left home!

Time for snapper.
Tomorrow we are going to explore the 40km Great Ocean Drive near Esperance then slowly head to Hopetoun just over 200 km away and hopefully do some more free camping.

Just paid our camping fees and had a really interesting chat
with the ranger. He gave us lots of tips for our trip north, some things to do and others to avoid. It’s amazing how nice people are out on the road and how willing they all are to share their experiences.  Now for that snapper. 🙂

Saturday 16^th of July 2011 Lucky Bay Esperance to 110 km East of Albany (Pallinup River)  530km (includes a 100km detour to Hopetoun)

Got up around 7.30am went down to the beach and took a few
photos, the light was lovely.  We had a lot of rain overnight, in the morning we realised that there was a drain fairly near to us – the ground was a bit boggy!!
We will be a bit more observant in future – so much to learn!

On the road around 8.30am drove to Esperance, on the way near a farm house we saw a replica of Stonehenge, Greg stopped and took a photo, brought back nice memories of our visit to the real thing.     When we got to Esperance we did the Ocean Drive, started off at the Jetty with Sammy the Seal –  it was raining, but with an umbrella each we managed to get some good photos.  It was
a really large Seal, sleeping peacefully near a coffee van that was doing good business.

Then we did The Esperance Ocean Drive, it was about 43 km
with beautiful scenery a combination of the southern area of Kangaroo Island and Boomer Beach at Port Elliot.  There
were lots of spots to get out and enjoy the scenery  – we were even able to get out at a wind farm and go right up to the wind turbines – I enjoyed doing that!
Ethan would have loved it, I could see him standing there looking at them doing his helicopter noise, wocka wocka wocka,… 🙂

After the Drive we headed West to Hopetoun where we pulled up on a breakwater and had lunch overlooking another beautiful each. We had thought of staying the night here, but as we had seen all there was to see in an hour, so  we decided against that. As it was only 2.30pm so we decided to drive further west than we intended, so we are only just over 100 km from Albany.

Along the way the way we saw kangaroos, emus, camels – in a farm, a road warning sign saying there were Mallee Fowl around (Scary stuff)– but much to our disappointment we didn’t see any.

Around 5pm, just as dusk was really setting in, we pulled into a free camping spot for the night – we collected some firewood, set up the
van, set up the fire and were sat down to dinner by 6pm.   Two other lots of people came in to the camp after us.     One guy joined us by the fire for a short time, he was travelling some of the way with a 70 year old man who was walking (35km per day)  from
Byron Bay (the most easterly point of Australia) to Denham (the most westerly point of Australia) raising money for a medical helicopter service.  I have to say, I thought the push bike riders we saw riding across the Nullarbor were crazy!   He is expected to arrive in Denham in Oct and is currently in Victoria.

After our fire we decided to watch a video – started watching Madmen (I am glad office culture has changed somewhat in 60 years!)   but before we did, the television came off the wall – fortunately Greg caught it!   Looks like they had a few tries at getting it up on the wall by the number of screw holes in the wall!
Anyhow Greg managed to fix it after taking a photo of the number of holes behind the bracket.

Was a very cold night, I managed to get warm with the thermal
socks and the hot water bottle (which I have sat on my lap at 7.30am in the morning!!)  It was so cold we had to pull the blankets half way up our face to keep our face warm.    Greg told me this morning that he thought we needed another blanket last night!!
That is how cold it is.   It got the better of me at 6.30am I had to get up and see what the temperature was, so I rugged up and went out to the car to look 2 degrees!  I could have sworn it was  -2 degrees.     But it was beautiful outside as well as  cold.   The moon was still up and the sunlight was shining through in the east, really crisp and clear outside, I soaked it up and quickly went back inside!   You know how when it is cold and you breathe out, is it steam that comes out of your mouth?  Well it is doing that while we are in the van!    Brrr think we better get a move on and pack up and get in the car! (it took an hr in the car with the heater on for my feet to thaw out – haven’t been this cold since we were in Antarctica)

We are off to Albany this morning, back in mobile phone range (we have  Telstra wifi with us and it has much better coverage than our Optus phones!)   We are staying in Albany for 3 days, looking forward to celebrating the old boy’s birthday tomorrow.   We are starting early, off to the Wild Duck tonight for a degustation – can’t wait!  🙂

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