We packed from Hamersley Inlet this morning and headed into Hopetoun to refill our drinking water supply before heading on to Esperance and then Cape Le Grand National Park. Although water was said to be at Le Grand NP, I realized it would not be drinking water, so we made the effort to restock at Hopetoun.
This is our morning tea stop. There are still lots of wildflowers in bloom. We are also seeing a lot of the red flowering gums in flower.
There are vast tracks of cleared land for wheat and sheep.
This was very pretty with a variation of colours in the bush. The flowers seem to start with a pink blush and mature into a soft brown/yellow – a very vintage colour scheme.
We crossed the rabbit proof fence. This fence in WA – starts at the coast just out of Hopetoun and goes all the way to 80 Mile Beach in the north.
The red arrow is our car parked where I took the photo. They obviously don’t maintain it and the rabbits are free to use the road to enter the other side.
There was a large bush fire just 20 kilometres out of Esperance. We saw everyone today, the ambulance, the police and the fire brigade.
We were fighting the wind the entire drive, so the fire was obviously out of control.
When we entered Esperance, we followed the tourist information sign and it takes you through the worst sites of the town – and drives you around in a circle – so our impression of Esperance wasn’t very good.
The information centre was closed and several people called in as well as us, trying to figure out why they would close it before lunch time as everyone has several hours drive to get to the town. The forecast high wind absolutely had white caps all through the bay. This high wind is expected for two weeks.
We refuelled and did a quick shop (just as well) as we wanted to get to Cape Le Grand as early as possible to make sure that we could get a camp site. Unfortunately the entire park was full, so we travelled on to Cape Arid. We were going to leave the shop and drive back to Esperance the following day, so glad that we didn’t, because we then had to drive another 100 kilometres to Thomas River. We chose Thomas River camp to see if we could tuck in around a headland and luckily we have found a site that has some protection.
The western new Holland honeyeater and the silver eyes were hassling Glen for the water, so I let some run, they were obviously thirsty and were soon enjoying a drink. I might be able at last to grab a snap of the honeyeater who is quite shy.
After we set up, we walked down to the beach – in the distance is Cape Arid. The sand is white and as you can see even though it is windy it is not as fierce as it was in Esperance. We were told that Esperance is a very windy place and it lived up to its name.
Cape Arid has nice private bush sites with inter linking walkways to the toilets and camp kitchen. These do not appear to be very old at all. You can also camp down near the river in the shire camp site – the prices are the same. It did not appear to be as well protected, so we opted for the NP site. There is a van down at the shire camp site and we are the only ones in the NP site. Although it is a shame we missed out on Le Grand, it would have been crowded and noisy which is not for us, I think we are going to enjoy the peace and quiet and the birds here. :)
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