Sunday 23rd April
Esperance W.A.
I was up at 6.30 a.m. although it was a better wake up time of 5.30 a.m. I realised last night as I lay in bed just what a hoon town Kalgoorlie is. It seems as if every buck in the west was out to prove his manhood by burning rubber all over town. Perhaps it’s a mating ritual to attract the local chicks. To my mind, the only true winners are the owners of the tyre outlets in town!
A leisurely pack into a nice clean, dust free vehicle (
well the front anyway) and then we bid farewell to Bea and Toby and then to
Coolgardie only 32 km along the Great Eastern Hwy. Small, almost ghost type town with its main street retaining some magnificent old buildings. The town hall is amazing. Not much else though besides a servo and a caravan park. I’m sure that it would be like all those little parks tucked away in strange niches in that the residents would be the odd and the eccentric.
3 hours further south to
Norseman ands then to Salmon Gums where we had a lunch from the box in a little grassy park next to the town hall. Nice little Mallee town like so many back in Vic. The countryside is classic mallee wheat-belt as exact as that in Victoria. Salmon Gums felt like any little town I’d been to in Vic,
Sea Lake,
Nandaly, and Patchy.
It was only another 80 kms from Salmon Gums to
Esperance (via Grassy Patch). We are booked in at the Crokers Caravan Park 3 km out of town. Different type of park being small and
well rated. Attracts a lot more of the oldies I think. Not much of a chance to meet and socialise with others like ourselves.
Took a quick drive into town and found it to be a very pleasant place set up and no doubt drawing a lot of tourists. The broad esplanade along
the beach is pine tree lines and grassy verged. The jetty is
well maintained and even the port and its loading facilities does not detract from the overall surroundings. The Rotary
lookout provided an excellent overview of the surrounding coast, mountains and islands. I hadn’t realised that there was such a number of
granite islands in the bays around
Esperance. The view across and towards
Cape Le Grand National park is quite spectacular especially with the brilliant blue ocean. This was followed up with a drive for 10 km west along the coast stopping to look at the various beaches, coves and headlands. All very scenic and spectacular. Dinner was local fish and chips at the caravan park. Very lazy. Very tired also.