While we were in Esperance, we took a boat trip out to the Recherche Archipelago and spend a brief time on Woody Island, the only one of the 110 or so islands that has a camping area and a building – a restaurant.

Saw lots of seals and sea lions, dolphins, gannets, cormorants and a shearwater – no albatrosses though, unfortunately. Or whales – wrong time of the year for them as they have already headed north for the winter.

The Archipelago also has about 1500 reefs which were discovered by the French in about 1800. The presence of the French was a major reason why the British decided to start a colony in Western Australia in 1826…(no one asked the locals what they thought of that, of course.)