Every writer dreads that question, because we know that if someone had to ask it, they don’t get the way a writer’s mind works. Our problem is never ideas – but the writing. We trip over ideas all the time.

To explain. These are more photos taken around Esperance, Western Australia. Lucky Bay to be exact.

I was walking down the steps in the first picture when I looked to my left – and snapped picture 2 as a result. Look closely. What can you see? Anything that suggests an idea for a book? Yes, they are just rocks, but…

Look a bit closer. And if there’s not a rock there that doesn’t give you an idea or two, believe me, you are not a fantasy writer!!

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.)

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…

Probably won’t get an opportunity to blog again till we are back in Perth, so two posts today.

This one is still about the Eyre Bird Observatory.

While having meals on the verandah, we watched the birds come down to the water holes to drink – evil-looking ravens, flamboyant Major Mitchell Cockatoos posturing with their crests to frighten off the former, Silver-eyes, numerous honey-eaters, currawongs, and the magnificent Brush Bronzewing pigeons, the latter absurdly regal for such cowards. They would stalk in, backtracking every time there was an unexpected noise or movement, as if in some pointless, stately dance. Sometimes their nervous agitation was such they flew away without drinking.

All this, just a couple of metres away from where we sat, entranced, at our meal or coffee.

We went for lots of walks – down to the sea, through the woodlands, over the dunes.

On our second night there, when I went outside in the middle of the night, the sky was clear, the night moonless. And in the desert air, I saw something I haven’t seen for years, a sight few ever see these days. I saw the Milky Way.

Yes, I know many of you will say you have, but unless you have stood under a desert sky on a moonless night when the ONLY light is that of the stars – you won’t really know what I mean. I have never seen this in Malaysia, for example, because there is always too much water vapour in the air. You never see it in any city anywhere either, because the air is too polluted and the competition from other light sources too intense.

The stars blazed – there is no other word for it – large and glitteringly brilliant in a band across the sky – and through it all the milky clouds of the galaxy are entwined (formed, I suppose, of the myriad of distant stars too small to be seen with the naked eye). These clouds are mist on a trail of cut diamonds, and when you see it, you know why it earned the name Milky Way.

Alas, few people see it any more. We pay a price for progress.

This is a 4WD track that wends its steep way over the escarpment from the Nullabor Plains down to the coastal plains – and to the old telegraph station, once was one of the relay stations that sent on the messages between western and eastern Australia. The place is now run by Birds Australia, manned by volunteers.

After three nights camping, it was luxurious. Even our meals were cooked for us…

The photos show various parts ot the track, including the precipitous descent over the scarp. Tyres had to be let down in order manage the sandy track without ripping it up. The limestone house has been lovingly restored.

The best part was, though, the birds…

We had travelled over 1,200 kms from Perth by the time we arrived in Cocklebiddy. We had also travelled down Australia’s straightest road. And seen more results of bushfires. And sighted our first kangaroos and Wedge-tailed Eagles of the trip.

Kangaroo road-kill adorns the highway where it crosses the Nullabor Plains, and the eagles and ravens quarrel as they consume the carcasses – and yes, they are ravens, and not crows.

I love this land – so spare, so harsh, so stark in its colours, so wide in its sky. It is part of me, though I live my life elsewhere.

Spinifex makes circles on the ground, trees die in fires and sprout again at the base – battlers in a land so disadvantaged that, elsewhere on earth, nothing more than grass would grow under such conditions.

It rains as we travel, and the earth drinks – and survives another day.

Cocklebiddy greets us with a wind that wars with us as we try to erect the tent, and promises to pound the canvas all night long. Sunset lours at us in angry greys and everchanging red. Supper is steak and bread and tomatoes and a glass of red wine. When stars peep through the cloud, they are truly diamond-like in their brilliance. Not town stars any more, but desert stars aglitter.

The wind gusts, the tent flaps, but I sleep.