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Published: December 21st 2009
Day 234 - Cape le Grand
Brrrr it was a chilly night last night and when I woke up to find it dark outside I knew it was going to be a long day! Dar was still sound asleep, a good indicator that it was too early for a walk along the beach even. I lay there listening to the ocean waves and trying to drift back off to sleep but it was hopeless, once I’m awake, I’m awake.
Being the light sleeper that he is, the slightest movement from me wakes Darryl up and because I fidget that doesn’t take too long!
Waking up so early means we’re in the car and off out for the day by 7am. We drove around to the site of Le Grande Beach campsite just to see if there’s much of a difference from the lovely one here at Lucky Bay. Very grande it is but it looks full and not as nice as our bay anyway so we made a good choice. Darryl walked over the rocks along the shore while I walked up to the lookout. Nice outlook, shame the sun isn’t breaking through the clouds more, in fact
it’s shame there’s so many clouds! All those picture postcards of this coastline with the stunning blue sky and the turquoise ocean, we can only hope that the weather comes good before the day is through.
I joined Dar on the rocks to find him trying to entice a crab from his hidey hole. This ‘bait in waiting’ looked good enough to lure some tasty fish but alas he wasn’t willing to come and play. Darn as we’d not brought any bait whilst we were in Esperance and it’s a long 55kms back to town via the sealed roads or a 22km beach drive … which does sound preferable but we’re just not that desperate to feed more fish!
We made use of the facilities at the camp site here, it’s a nice looking site and the pitches are laid out in such a way that you do have your own privacy rather where we are at Lucky Bay which is in three tiers and therefore more like a caravan park. Maybe next we come we’ll stay a few nights here just so that we’ve tried them both!
It was time for today’s climbing mission and we
have chosen Frenchman’s Peak to exert ourselves on for the next few hours. Unlike the deserted East Mt Barren yesterday, we find that we have company this morning and their legs look fresher than mine so I send them up first using the excuse that they will be ‘something to chase’!
It’s far harder than East Mt Barren, far steeper in sections and mildly higher I would say. The climb is sign posted all the way and we only go ‘off piste’ for a tiny section where you should meander up a gentle slope but we decided to climb straight ahead, it didn’t look dangerous and luckily it wasn’t.
You think you’ve reached the top and then another bit stretches out in front of you but like all mountain climbs the views are amazing and makes the effort totally worth while. We chat to a family who reach the top not long after us and Dar realises they are looking for a Geo-cache. I did a search for one of these hidden treasures back in Coral Bay but I hadn’t thought to look for one here, who would! It seems a little bit iffy to have buried a
cache quite so high up the mountain and in an area containing a lot of sheer drops. We help with the search, we’re not muggles so we think it’s allowed and while we’re crouching down looking under boulders Darryl lets out a shout, he thinks he’s found it. Give him his due, he wasn’t with us when we did the Coral Bay cache so he has no idea what he’s looking for and he still hasn’t! What he’s found isn’t the cache but it is rather interesting. It seems to be an oar with the paddle inscribed to read “G Gaynor placed 28/02/81, visited 11/03/83”. It was so well hidden between the rocks and that’s probably why it’s survived up here for so long. We wonder who G Gaynor is and what the significance of the broken paddle is, it seems like an interesting yet strange item to bring up to the peak with you!
We left the family still looking for the Geo-cache as we wandered down to the peak below. From here you get a great view across to Hellfire Bay and you get to walk in the cave worn away by the elements which gives the
mountain its peak! It’s quite surreal standing out of the wind and feeling so protected, we wonder how many people have camped up here over the years. There’s evidence of fires being lit so we bet the last camping expedition wasn’t that long ago!
My beautiful croc walking shoes are still playing up, the back strap is next to useless on the left foot at the moment. It’s making them a bit unsafe as it’s becoming easy to slip and that’s not good when you’re this high up! I really must remember to email the company and see if they will send some new straps or better still some new shoes!
The shout goes up from the Geo-caching family, they’ve found their treasure so the kids are happy and now they can all go back down and look for another one at the bottom!
We wander through more wild flowers at the bottom of the mountain and bump into a family we first saw out at Wave Rock. The girls were really moaning at their Dad that day because he was taking ages photographing the rock from lots of different angles and it was really hot. It’s
not so warm today but there are plenty of photography shots to do up there so we think the girls are in for another long walk!
From here we drove out to Rossiter Bay which is only 6km further on from the campground but on dirt road, corrugated dirt road. It’s not too evil in fairness and doesn’t take us long to drive out to yet another tranquil, secluded area of Western Australia. It’s a shame it’s not a warmer day as it would have been terrific to have the secluded beach to ourselves and be able to swim over to the little groups of islands dotted around the coastline. We stood and listened to the flock of birds in the middle of the bush who sounded like they were attending choir practise, it was absolutely glorious although we’ve no idea what type of birds they were! We found lots of shells on the rocks here, all smashed into tiny pieces and therefore broken open. We assumed they were oyster shells as you could see Mother of Pearl on the inside but we found what we think are Abalone shells too so maybe there was a mixture.
We’d
left our lunch back at camp so drove back, ate and then shot out for another walk. Thistle Cove is just around the corner from Lucky Bay and like everything along the coast of Western Australia, it is of course gorgeous! We clambered as high as we could on some rocks to take different shots of the ocean from both sides, one dark blue with crashing waves and the other turquoise water with white sand and tumbling waves. Divine, you can see why people fall in love with this place.
A group of lads were just leaving the campsite to go fishing, they had rods, buckets and a huge pile of doughnuts! “Interesting bait, fish got a sugar addiction have they?” joked Darryl as we walked past, it got a laugh and the obvious response that the doughnuts weren’t for the fish!
There are plenty of divers getting ready to enter the chilly water, our joke with them was that we hoped they had thermals on under their wetsuits! They couldn’t disagree, it’s freezing cold but they were hopeful to spot sea dragons and crayfish whilst they were out. We couldn’t believe how many divers there were so
late in the day, we thought perhaps it was a club or maybe this is just the best place to dive but either way they told us later that they didn’t see a lot.
As we wandered around Lucky Bay Darryl happened across a lady relaxing in the sun, Debbie later told us she was trying to warm up enough to get in for a snorkel! From the other side of the bay she had spotted a huge cave and she thought it was just around the corner from where she was sitting so figured it would be easy enough to swim to from here. Darryl immediately set off clambering over the rocks to see what he could see. That left me chatting to Debbie for ages which I didn’t mind at all because she was a lovely lady, her and husband Simon are from Bridport and currently visiting her sons who now both live in Melbourne. They’re touring for 3 months so I gave her lots of camping spots to check out and winery hints around Margaret River which is where they’re planning to spend Christmas. What a jolly nice spot that will be in.
By the
time Darryl came back, Debbie’s husband Simon had returned from his walk along the opposite side of the beach so we all wandered in the direction of the mysterious cave. It turned out to be the other side of a huge mountain of rock that we couldn’t possibly climb from here but the outlook was still fantastic and gave us another ‘see through rock’ to look through!
Back at camp I rushed in for a hot shower while Dar went back along the dirt road to Rossiter Bay looking for our hub cap which seems to have disappeared from the rear wheel of the car. He came back empty handed but I at least came out of the shower refreshed, warm and clean!
Simon very kindly brought over the Nullarbor map that he and Debbie had used when they made the long journey a couple of days ago. We plan to make a start on it tomorrow so they shared the places that they’d enjoyed and left us with the map which we will make great use of in the morning!
The evening was spent doing dinner, playing Rummikub and creating new CDs for the long Nullarbor
journey! Now that we’ve got Nigel’s music collection we’re going to get our fix of Pink Floyd, Queen, Hunters & Collectors, Neil Diamond, Missy Higgins - variety is the spice of life and all that.
We’re looking to do a bit of a bolt in the morning so rather than wake everyone else with the eerk, eerk, eerk of the caravan legs being wound up at stupid o’clock we did a lot of the preparation tonight. It meant that the van rocks every time we move but hey ho, that’s not so bad!
Dar and Sar
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Jan Kettle
non-member comment
The best beaches in the world?
Wonderful photos as always and they look like fabulous beaches - more places for us to put on our 'must do' list! xxx Mum K