Coast

With Easter coming up fast we belatedly began searching for a ‘home’ for this busy weekend and eventually locked in Bushlands Holiday Village in Esperance. Not the fanciest and with questionable Telstra reception and internet but with ‘large sites and friendly managers.’

This left us with two nights to kill before then and we checked in to the cute little caravan park in Salmon Gums, a tiny community between Norseman and Esperance. It’s main claim to fame, not surprisingly, is the abundance of beautiful salmon gums throughout the area – Eucalyptus salmonophloia – but for us it provided a quiet spot with power and water and a much needed washing machine for Steph and I to utilise.

The local pub did quite a nice parmy and was full of interesting memorabilia.

It was around this stage we began to suspect that we were having issues with our batteries, solar didn’t seem to be topping them up and we resolved to get them checked in Esperance. Much discussion ensued about the benefits of lithium if we needed to replace and the fact that unlike other Conquests, it appears that we don’t have a DC to DC charger, meaning that the ‘car’ battery does not top up the ‘house’ battery when driving as we had thought it did ….

I had already left messages with a couple of air conditioning guys as we had determined that the car air con was not working and to my great surprise received a call at 3pm on Thursday from a lovely fellow offering to come look in our caravan park at 0900 on Good Friday! Craig’s Autocare turned out to be our best discovery in Esperance ….over the Easter weekend he fixed the aircon, replaced our AGM batteries with a new lithium and installed a DC to DC charger!

Very happy we were, especially since we we were able to leave him to it whilst we visited beautiful Cape Le Grand National Park and the stunning local Esperance beaches that make up the coastal loop drive.

West Beach

 

So what makes these beaches so white and the water so magically blue?

“Obviously, a pristine environment helps. Another factor is the distance from rivers, which deliver coloured organic and clay contaminants to the coast.

The geology of the area and the source of the sand are also critical, with quartz seemingly a major requirement for fine sands. Most white sandy beaches are derived from granitic, or less commonly sandstone, geologies that weather to produce fine, frosted quartz sand grains.”

Lucky Bay has consistently been named whitest beach in Australia and it was easy to see why when we visited even though it was a rainy day.

 

Lucky Bay

Thirty minutes after this picture was taken we were at nearby Thistle Cove in bright sunshine (header picture.)

Thistle Cove

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the coast along this part of Western Australia is consistently stunning. Each little cove is different than the last and we could easily have spent a week in this region and still not seen enough. On a side note, the ‘Pink’ Lake that I visited 40 years ago is now no longer pink, sign boards explained why but many tourists feel a bit miffed 😉

Easter Monday with our new battery and charger doing their thing, we packed up ready to leave and shock, horror, the slideout wouldn’t come in!!! Many of you would know that we have some issues recently with our slide out and these had been resolved ….. until now. A bit of clever manoeuvring and some brute force enable us to get it retracted and we crossed our fingers that someone in Albany in a few nights time would be able to address the problem, we are not game to take it out so will be sleeping in foetal position until then 😒

Ravensthorpe

Leaving Esperance we planned to stay at the very popular 48 hour RV stay in Hopetoun, a small coastal community south of Ravensthorpe. No bookings are taken and there are only ten sites so we hoped the long drive would be fruitful and it was. By lunchtime we were checking out our local beach (100m away) and researching the tides.

Mid afternoon saw us getting our lines (and feet) wet and pulling in (some) decent sized tommies and sand whiting, culminating in enough for the four of us for dinner.

 

Hopetoun also provides the eastern access to the Fitzgerald River National Park, known for its biodiversity and more stunning scenery.

The park was surprisingly quiet given that it is still WA school holidays and we had most spots to ourselves, always a relief when you want to fly the drone.

The flora was indeed diverse and provided beautiful photo opportunities.

Fitzgerald River National Park

We tried our luck fishing again in the afternoon but the weather was deteriorating and we gave up with half a dinner catch which was very kindly supplemented by the people fishing up the beach from us so we had fish for dinner again 👌

With our 48 hours expired (and regularly policed by the ranger) we moved on to beautiful Bremer Bay. You may have seen Bremer Bay in the media of late, it is becoming quite well known for the relatively recently discovered Bremer Canyon which lies about 50kms off shore and is home to an amazing array of oceanic predators, amongst them the Orca or ‘killer whale.’ We had been very tempted by the charter which visits this area especially as a pod of Orcas hunting a blue whale had been seen only last week but had decided that it was either Orcas or Whale sharks in Ningaloo not both 😒

Bremer Bay and surrounds had lots of other sights to see though and despite an oncoming very cold front we managed to see quite a bit and had a lovely stay in the Bremer Bay Beaches Tourist Park (although thought for next time the other CP is in a better fishing position 😉)

Our stay here ended perfectly when we decided to visit the Bremer Bay Resort for dinner and the seafood platter was only $68 and scrumptious! Could it get any better? Yes, the Crows demolished Carlton 💛💙❤️

Tomorrow, on to the big smoke of Albany and we see about slide out repairs…..

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