4 days in Esperance

31 Oct 2015

2:30 pm
Bay of Islands B&B

Checked in at 9:30 am and Helen was kind to give us our room really early. Cute B&B right on the bay.

3:00 pm
Weekend in esperance

Flew from Perth to Esperance this morning, just a 1h25min flight with Virgin Australia.

3:30 pm
Cape le grand

Visited this gorgeous national park. Drove in our Budget rental car about 45 min to get there. Was worth it. Best beaches ever. First beach we went to was hellfire bay. Gorgeous, quiet, secluded. We got engaged!! Then on to lucky bay. Another incredible beach voted best beach in WA. We hung out with kangaroos on the beach!

4:00 pm
Lunch at Condingup Tavern

Drove about 30min, partially on gravel road from Cape Le grand to an old tavern, in the family for 3 generations. Had fresh snapper and cider, then enjoyed another cider in their beer garden! Grabbed a couple of delicious berries off their mulberry bush on the way out!

8:00 pm
Nap and dinner

We went back to the room and dozed for a nice long nap. The temperature got quite warm, despite threats of rain, it was a gorgeous day. Then we went into Esperance for dinner at loosegoose. We both had snapper in a wrapper. Average at best, but the wine was delish.

9:00 pm
Drinks at the motel - Esperance Ocean Blues After dinner we walked across to the motel for live music by local blues band lez something. Really good music!

01 Nov 2015

8:00 am
Esperance day 2!

Slept really well and waking up to gorgeous views from our lovely, spacious room.

8:30 am
Helen’s breakfast

Had a yummy hot breakfast cooked by Helen and enjoyed chatting with her husband Milton and the other guests. They saw dolphins in the bay this morning, but we haven’t been lucky yet.

11:00 am
Sunday market

Drove into town and enjoyed the Sunday market. It was small but had a surprising variation of stalls from food and handicrafts to live animals and fish. One of the guys was selling a Mexican walking fish! We bought some gorgeous tea cups made by a local Japanese girl, some beeswax wrapping and natural face mask.

11:30 am
Great Ocean Drive

Next we did the great ocean drive, which is a loop for tourists with all the main beaches along the way. We stopped at nearly every one and even though the day is cool, the beaches were incredible and there were a few people out either fishing or 4x4ing. We stopped at salmon beach, then fourth beach then twilight (photo with the rock cave) then picnic beach then 10 mile lagoon then 11 mile beach (photo with me doing 11 and on the rocks!)

1:00 pm
A close call on tanker jetty

After finishing ocean drive, we went down to the local jetty to see if we could catch any fishing action. First, Lyndon grabbed a pie from the Esperance bakery food truck! Just as we got to the jetty, 3 boys were reeling something in that appeared to be pretty big. We watched them bring in a fairly big stingray!! About 1m across. We were so worried they were going to bat it over the head, but to our relief, they released him back into the water.

2:00 pm
Lunch at Taylor Jetty bar and cafe

Thanks to the boys releasing the Ray, we still had appetites and went to a promising bar for live music and fish. The location was quite nice overlooking the harbour and Lyndon got a free beer out of the mixup! But that was the best there was. The grilled red emperor fish I ordered was fishy and chewy and Lyndon’s fish and chips were just average. Shame. We still enjoyed chilling out for a bit and attempting a crossword. We’re still crossing our fingers that someone is this!

12:00 pm Ocean drive more photos!

From 11 mile beach. I’m a mermaid! Beautiful coastal town (of only 15,000 people) does a nice job of fresh fish… It’s not very warm today, so headed back to the room for a nap!

7:00pm
Back out on the town

After a refresh and doing a bit of work, we went back into town for dinner. We went to the Pier hotel where Lyndon had a pepperoni pizza (from their stone pizza oven) which was ok, and I had a Thai beef salad. There was nothing Thai about it, but it was delicious and the beef perfectly cooked! From there we went back to Taylor jetty because we wanted to see the live music that wasn’t on earlier. This time we came too late! (It had finished at 7). But we started chatting with some friendly locals and joined them in town, back at the pier for a night cap. We were drinking fat yak beer which I quite liked. We really enjoyed the visit and Calum promised his hat that his girlfriend Sarah would take us surfing the next day.

02 Nov 2015

2:00 pm
Day 3 - Rain!

We woke up to a super windy and rainy and grey day. We didn’t have it in us to try surfing without a wetsuit (or even with!) and so called it off. There’s actually not a lot to do on a rainy day there, so after attempting the museum (it was too early), we went back to our lovely room to work. We went back into town around 2pm to go to the museum. It really is a brilliant museum (costs $7 each) and for such a small town they’ve done an amazing job of collecting and exhibiting their history. A highlight were a few cars from an old coal train. I took a photo of the control car which was pretty impressive.

3:30 pm
Gibson Soak

After the museum, we tried to go out for lunch but everything was closed. It turned out for the better because we decided to go about 20km out of town to try a “traditional pub/gas station/restaurant/general store”! It’s called the Gibson soak and was quite a charming place with a great atmosphere. He restaurant was closed until dinner so we sat at he bar with a beer and crisps, visiting with the owner and a friendly farmer from Adelaide. Lyndon played the juke box as the weather got worse, and there was a lovely warm fire inside. Apparently the bar has been here since the late 19th century. We loved it! The photo I took was pretty bad…

6:30 pm
Food!

Not being able to avoid the beautiful beaches even on such a grey day, we went for a quick walk before dinner on salmon beach, where Calum and Sarah suggested. So pretty.

Afterwards we went to ocean blues for dinner and were pleasantly surprised by the fish and chips and calamari. We were probably hungry too, but it was a good meal and tasted home cooked! It was also one of our cheapest meals at $40 +$20 for the byob bottle of wine we brought.

5mins and we were back to our room, settling in for the night to watch a South Korean movie called snow piercer. A cool film, as far as sci-fi goes, and some great acting by Tilda Swinton!

03 Nov 2015

9:30 am Day 4 - last day!

The sky was finally clear and blue, but the temperature didn’t get higher than 20 degrees. Still, it felt hot to is after the previous day. We had a lovely breakfast again by Helen - this time with fresh baked muffins and a few hand picked mulberries because she was getting ready for a house of guests stopping by to watch the Melbourne cup.

Helen kindly let us keep our room until 4:30pm since our plane wasn’t til the evening. As the day was so beautiful, we started with a walk at woody lake. It’s a hidden recommendation in the guidebook of Esperance. It’s just 5 min out of town and is a bit of a bush walk around the circumference of connecting lakes. The highlights are birdwatching at the 3 viewing sites they set up over the lakes. While we didn’t see much wildlife or even birds, it was very tranquil and enjoyable.

Lyndon spotted a blue billed duck thanks to the helpful pictures they posted.

10.30am
Beaches!

We had to spend as much of he remaining time possible on the beach. So we changed into shorts and headed over to twilight beach. We scaled the big Boulder like monkeys and lay on our hot rock like lizards for the next couple of hours. It was absolutely beautiful.

1:00 pm
Beach picnic!

I couldn’t fit my cartwheel photo on the twilight beach post, so here it is, perfectly captured by Lyndon! We were a bit disenchanted by our lunch choices, and none of the places we had already eaten at we’re musts to revisit, so we had a great idea of having a picnic! We went to woolworth and bought a roasted chicken and a few things to make sandwiches, and of course some savannah dry ciders from the bottle shop and headed to another beach. We set up our lovely picnic and enjoyed our best lunch, with a beautiful gull, until it started to rain!

5:30 pm
Goodbye Esperance!

We both agree - we saw the most beautiful beaches we have ever seen in Esperance. The locals were super friendly and they probably cool meat better than fish! The tourism industry is struggling there (locals divided about the benefits, Virgin airlines closing their route, lots of activities closed, seems to be a fair number of houses and businesses for sale and on the market for years), but it is an absolute gem, even in the rain. We kept the wishbone from our roast chicken. Maybe it will bring some luck to Esperance too!