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Published: March 11th 2013
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We arrived in Esperance after completing 'The Nullarbor' on the afternoon of Mon 4th March.
It would have been more sensible to have taken the road towards Perth but Esperance is THE place for beaches and we still had 6 days in our van and we wanted to see and do as much as possible.
John & Andrea had said that we could stay at their place in Perth if it was becomming too much but we were loving it and we actually considered extending our rental. We also now had a name for the Britz hire van - 'Glitsy Britzy'!!!! (Annie's name, not mine!) - That trip along the Nullarbor had obviously sent her mad!
We arrived in Esperance mid afternoon and found it to be a sleepy little town but immaculately kept and we found a campsite near the sea.
It was nice to have shower after 36 hours in the van and we did the laundery and re-charged the campervan batteries etc.
After a week travelling through the middle of nowhere we now had electric power again and even internet and phone signals.
We managed to get a couple of hours on the town beach
Esperance
Castletown! and then had our dinner and settled down for an early night at about 7pm.....
Well, we had been up since dawn and we had also gained two and a half hours crossing the two time zones on the Nulllarbor.
Feeling refreshed the next day we stocked up with food, water and fuel in town and then set off for Orleans Bay, about 80km East of Esperance.
Most of the beautiful places we had found had been well off the normal tourist track and had come about as the result of recommendations from other travellers.... and this was no exception!
We found a beach called Wharton Beach with superb aqua marine blue water and pure white, powder sand. It was like Johnson's talcum powder. We've never seen anything like it..... and the sand squeeked when you walked over it!! It was such a shame that the weather wasn't great.
The warning sign at the entrance to the beach is funny - there is no lifeguard and beware of snakes, strong currents and sharks! (See the picture)...
It might look gorgeous but it was a bloody dangerous place to swim! We were told that a shark had bitten off a
Wharton Beach
Not the safest beach in the world! mans leg at this beach last year.
We booked a pitch for 2 nights at the only campsite in the area and even then we only managed to secure a spot because it was mid-week. - Most weekends are fully booked ... and it has to be booked two years in advance at peak times!
The weather turned cloudy that afternoon so the pictures do not really do it justice ... but trust me, it was beautiful, we had definately saved the best until last!!!
The site was remote, very quiet and right on the beach.... but no phone, internet or radio signal again. The only problem was that the weather looked like it was turning bad. And sure enough the next morning we woke up to a storm, and there is no a lot to do in a small camper in the middle of nowhere in torrential rain.
I'm sure the locals have been praying for rain for months but it was our last few days and we were not impressed.
Annie stayed in the dry van and I explored the beaches and bushland in the rain. There was a minor mishap when I fell from a slippy
rock and ended up headfirst into the sea but there we were no sharks and only my pride was injured!
The following day we left Orleans Bay and moved the short distance to the 'Cape Le Grand National Park' near Esperance.
The place was enormous with huge mountains, unusual rock formations and the most incredible beaches including Hellfire Beach and Lucky Bay which won an award for being one of the best beaches in Australia recently.
There was a small campsite at Lucky Bay and we managed to get on the last available pitch.... that was lucky.
What wasn't so lucky was that we dropped our only remaining camera and cracked the screen on the back but we hope it still takes decent pictures.
The site was in an incredible spot within the National Park area, right on the award winning beach and clean toilets and showers.... check out the pictures of kangaroo's on the beach....... but no power and no internet or phone again although rather strangely Annie looked at her phone at one point and saw that she had one bar signal.
It was Trisha's 40th so amazingly she was able to call her on her
birthday from the middle of nowhere. (I'm not sure if Trish appreciated being woken up at 1am though!)
On Friday 8th the weather was still poor and so we had a last walk along the beach and saw a wedding and met a couple from Cov!!!
We reluctantly started the journey North towards Perth that afternoon..... The final leg of our amazing adventure.
We stopped overnight in a small town called Dumbleyung in what is called the WA 'Wheat Belt' - thousands of miles of wheat and corn fields.
Lake Dumbleyung was where Sir Donald Cambell broke the world speed record on water in The Bluebird in the 1960's if you are interested.
(Lord knows how he found this lake in remote WA to attempt his record?)
We spent another night camping for free in the town centre and then finally reached Perth where we stayed overnight at a campsite in the suburbs ready to sort out our belongings, get cleaned up and hand back the van on Sun 10th March.
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