Glenda Larke

A minor case of being Noramlyed on the way home. I had the seat on the full plane that had no functioning video/music/reading light. Sigh.

And now it’s back to getting used to:
High humidity.
That damn Koel that keeps calling outside my window before dawn.
The ergomomic keyboard. I have to learn to use it all over again.
The roof that has sprung a new leak in a new place.

Easier to dream of Esperance. Here are some photos of Lucky Bay, Cape Le Grand National Park. Some call it the prettiest beach in Australia.

All good things come to an end. Including holidays. I have been incredibly lazy since Swancon, and the shock will set in next week when work attacks me with a vengeance.

In the meantime – here are some photos of that incredibly beautiful southern coastline… California, eat your heart out.

This is Thistle Cove, Cape Le Grand National Park, somewhere east of Esperance, Western Australia.

Just one of many beaches and bays – they go on for hundreds of miles. We were there when the weather was warm (27 plus celsius, in the 80s F). See all the hordes of people…?

We spent 6 days in Esperance, and exploring the southern coast in both directions.

To sum up: this has to be the most stunning coastline in the world. If it was in the Mediterranean or California, it would rank as having the world’s best beaches. It would become the hang-out of the rich and famous.

Luckily for us, it is largely unknown and it remains mostly deserted, pristine, undeveloped and quite, quite glorious. The Med? Forget it. Sydney? Or California? You’ve got to be kidding.

You know how you look at those brochures of beach resort in high-priced places? And you say to yourself, hey, the sea is never that colour – they must have used a polarising filter to get that…!? Well, along this coastline, the sea is that colour, all by itself. No filters or messing with photoshop needed. Translucent aquamarine in the shallows, to a deep blue in the depths, water scribbled across with the white froth of surf or the thundering foam of combers, or sometimes – in the sheltered bays, the gentle lap of laced riplets. They have it all – broad white sands, coloured rocks, island after island (105 named island in the Recherche for a start).

God, I love these southern shores. Forget Naples. See the Esperance coast and live.

Start the day at dawn with a walk along on Esperance Bay, then sit on the esplanade and have coffee overlooking the sea. Walk down the jetty and look at the sea lions basking on the water. Take a drive around the coast to look at some of the town beaches. Go out to the Recherche Archipelago and have lunch at Woody Island. Then explore the numerous nature reserves and national parks up and down the coast as we did. Walk the trails. Climb the hills. And wonder why you never came here before.

In a day or two I will post some photos of those brilliant beaches that will make you drool.

Pix 1 & 2 : remains of a pioneering homestead and the vegetable/ chicken run. Note the remains of flattened kerosene tin walls.

This was not the day we planned to have.

We began by taking a drive down a track on our way out of Eyre to look at an old abandoned farm settlement at the foot of the escarpment (photo 3) . The walls were made of flattened kerosene tins, a not uncommon form of recycling once upon a time.

Photo 3: the escarpment in the distance.

Photo 4 & 5: the old farm well. The walls of the well are made of wood.

After poking around the farm we set off for Norseman. Then we headed down the unsurfaced Norseman Road direct to Esperance, which perhaps was not a good idea. It is a shortcut – but a rather bad one. We ended up taking almost 4 hours, arriving well after dark, a journey during which we saw not a single vehicle in either direction until we were close to Esperance, nor any other sign of human life. Not a person, a house, a light, any sound – nothing. You know how unnerving that is as it gets darker and darker, the road rougher, the corrugations and stony outcrops harder to see…? And of course, the kangaroos start jumping out at you without warning.

Well, we did see those two gates, I suppose…in the middle of nowhere, performing no known purpose any more. Click on them to enlarge – so you can see what decorates them!

We made one wrong turn, which took us at dusk to a rather pleasant abandoned farmhouse of a bygone area. If we’d had any sense we would have pitched the tent there. Instead we pushed on, fingers crossed.

Esperance on a Friday night…was dead. And buried. Caravan Parks apparently close their offices at seven p.m. So, it seems, do motels. That’s right – it’s damned hard to procure a camping space, let alone a room after seven p.m.! We finally managed to get the last room in a very pleasant motel – after an hour of wandering around the town from one place to another, pounding on silent doors.

Hi everyone – I am now back in Perth, tired, grubby and contented. Also relieved not to be paying a ransom worthy of Dan Brown just to get an internet connection in caravan parks.

If my previous posts contain typos and grammatical errors – it was because I was so rushed trying to save the dollars, all at 54.0 Mbps!

Anyway, I shall blog more about the trip as the days go by, interspersed with other stuff too – and I shall read all your comments, catch up on numerous emails, have a shower in water that doesn’t taste of minerals and smell of fish delivered by the slow drip (all under huge notices begging you not to waste precious water, so that showers of any kind become an enormous guilt trip…).

Oh, and here’s a pix to entertain you. Three guesses what this is…