And so to Esperance, far south WA (8th – 12th November, 2011)

We headed further east along the south coastal highway of WA towards Esperance on a very windy and wet day so Hilda was getting a bit of a blasting along the way but we made the 500km to Esperance by late afternoon just as the rain cleared……great! The following four days spent at Esperance and its neighbour Cape Le Grand National Park were warm and dry!
Esperance is a seaside town and major port on the south coast. There’s nothing but the Southern Ocean between the mainland of Australia and the Antarctic. So it does get some windy weather (luckily not when we were there). Although Esperance itself is not that pretty it does lie on some of the most spectacular coastline we had ever come across in our travels so far round Aus.
On our first day there we took the Great Ocean Drive, a 30km circuit along some amazing coast sitting opposite the Bay of Islands (The Recherche Archipelago). Around every corner gave some gobsmacking views of big ocean. Massive rock outcrops and frothy surf on a bluer than blue ocean and beaches with sand whiter than white! ( and we had’nt even got to Cape Le Grand National Park yet where there are arguably the best beaches in Aus!). As you can imagine we took loads of photos which still don’t do it all justice. There was also a lake called Pink Lake (but it was’nt pink) on the return loop back to Esperance which has the same betacarotene infusion as the one south of Kalbarri.