Next stop – a week in Esperance. Finally a long stop somewhere and also back to the coast. We were excited for the week ahead!
Thursday, May 4th – (Day 28)
ESPERANCE: Back on the road and a 4 hour drive today. We took in turns doing an hour each and arrived in Esperance around 2pm. Driving in, we knew this was going to be a place we’d enjoy.
We hit a bit of a hiccup at our site, the utilities box was too far away to reach our caravan, so we were allowed to turn our caravan around the opposite way to make them fit. This turned out for the better, as we now had a nice view of the ocean and a private area at the end of the park near the fence.
Before heading off for an explore, we made cooked up some lunch and then walked into town. It was about a 25-30 minute walk but it was a beautiful walk along the beach foreshore.
Along the way we come across a couple of outdoor gym equipment so did a mini HIIT session. We spent a little while walking around town, got some ingredients from Woolworths and then headed back to the caravan.
We were staying at the RAC Esperance Holiday Park and this place was lavish. It has the best camp kitchen we had seen yet on our travels, plus the amenities block looked pretty much brand new.
Friday, May 4th – (Day 29)
With no plans for the day, we thought it’d be worthwhile to properly plan the rest of the holiday, given we were getting stressed things were going to start getting booked out. A few places up north were completely booked out, so it was not ideal!
We took the laptops into town and found a nice little cafe. They shut at 2pm so we had to go find a new spot, a bar around the corner called 33 Degrees. They had plenty of craft beers there so we saw this as a place we’d be coming back to again for sure.
It was a good planning session, we got almost all our remaining stops sorted. Linda managed to sort 5 nights in Broome by doing some wheeling and dealing. We’d originally planned to stay over a week in Exmouth, but unfortunately could only book 3 days.
Given the good spots were booked out, we had to add more days on to places like Karratha and Port Headland. Fingers crossed they are going to be nice!
After that we did another gym session on the free equipment, got some more stuff from Coles then headed back to the caravan. The rest of the night was spent listening to the Carlton vs Brisbane game (Carlton lost badly) and then finally started watching Ted Lasso after having it recommended to us so many times.
Saturday, May 6th – (Day 30)
The morning started with Adam having a piano lesson at 9am. After that it was pretty much another free day to do whatever.
After lunch we headed back to the 33 Degrees bar to watch a few games of footy and chill out. They were pretty ordinary games of footy, but it was something to do.
Linda brought her laptop and finished off booking our remaining accommodation spots. We were now fully booked up until the end of July, it was a relief!
Like the previous few days, we got some ingredients from Woolworths then headed back to the caravan. Later on in the evening we got some pretty amazing views of the moon across the ocean. Apart from that, it was a pretty lazy day really.
Sunday, May 7th – (Day 31)
Like yesterday, Adam had piano lessons in the morning which are scheduled every weekend. There was two and they went 3-4 hours, so we ended up having a late lunch.
The rest of the afternoon was super lazy sitting around the caravan and resting, doing basically nothing. It was a good chance to wind down after a busy week or two.
Around 5pm we decided to walk into town to grab some stuff from Woolworths. It was a chilly night and we resisted the temptation to drive, deciding rather to get some exercise. Unfortunately Woolworths was shut (shut all day Sunday’s apparently….) so we had nothing.
In the end we decided to go to the Esperance Hotel for tea, grabbing a couple of pizzas and enjoying the ambience. On the walk home we saw another epic moon, but this time it looked red like Mars and was super radiant. Not often you see the moon like this!
Monday, May 8th – (Day 32)
Hard to believe a month has already passed us by! Today’s plan was to go on a walking tour and visit some of the spots we’d been planning to see since we got our.
First stop was the lookout just around the corner from our caravan park that we have walked past each day. It gave us a pretty good view of the ocean and nearby, but we couldn’t see into the city part unfortunately.
Next stop was the pier. Before heading out to the pier, we got ourselves a smoothie from the little kiosk area next door. These smoothies were substantial, no need for lunch after this!
We continued our walk to the adventure park area, not before doing our routine gym session on the exercise equipment. The adventure park was more a kids thing, so we continued on and found the caravan park we were initially looking to stay at. Wise move we skipped on this place, because the one we chose was a million times better.
Next stop was Woolworths which was actually open today. We stocked up on ingredients for tea tonight, as well as getting some lunch for our beach adventures tomorrow.
As usual, the rest of the afternoon was spent back at the caravan catching up on work and chilling out. Not much else to report for today!
Tuesday, May 9th – (Day 33)
It was time to hop back in the car today for the first time since we got here, today was our beach tour today. We found what was known as the Great Ocean Drive Trail which was a 40km loop that takes in some of the best beaches in the area.
The first stop was the Rotary Lookout which gave nice views of the area, then it was on to the first few beaches. West Beach was absolutely stunning, as was Chapmans Point. After those two we stopped at the Old Wind Farm.
Next up was a stretch of beaches including Blue Haven, Salmon Beach and Fourth Beach. Everyone suggested that Twilight Beach was one of the best beaches in the area, so we decided to stop here for lunch. Adam even went for his first beach swim of the trip.
After lunch we hit the road again and made a stop at the stunning Observatory Point, which gave unreal views of the area. The water around here was so clear with a light aqua blue colour.
The next part of the trip was a bunch of lagoons which were also amazing. There was one lagoon in particular, 11 Mile Lagoon, which was particularly interesting. It was a nude beach which Adam definitely took advantage of!
After a long swim at the nudie beach, it was back in the car for the final leg of the trip which was a trip to Pink Lake. This was some false advertising as there was no pink to be seen, we had been dudded!
On the way back home we got some ingredients from Woolworths and then spent the rest of the night taking it easy back at the caravan park.
Wednesday, May 10th – (Day 34)
This would be our last day in Esperance and unfortunately it was to be the worst weather of the week. Most of the night it was rainy and there was more rain scheduled throughout the day.
Around 11am we headed back to 33 Degrees bar for the last time to do some work and watch the Phoenix vs Denver game at the sportsbar. After a few beers and a pretty uneven basketball game, we head outside with the rain now clearing up.
We got ourselves a cornish pasty and then went for a drive to this Stonehenge monument we’d read about. Not knowing what to expect, we rocked up about 1pm and was greeted by an overly chatty lady who gave us her lifestory.
It turns out this was a fair dinkum replica of Stonehenge to full scale, built from 137 locally quarried stones and weighing over 50 tons. This thing was actually amazing to see, they had angled it perfectly with the sun like the real Stonehenge in the UK so it was aligned with the summer and winter solstices.
We were here on our own so spent about half an hour playing hide and seek like we were kids. It was good fun, but the weather was starting to deteriorate, so it was time to hit the road. We got stuck talking to that lady again, eventually being saved by a group of people who arrived.
With the weather being pretty ordinary, there wasn’t much else we could do so we went back to the caravan and did our usual stuff for the rest of the night.
