12 September 2024
After three nights in wonderful Albany, we headed off to spend three nights in Esperance. While Esperance is only around halfway across the south coast of WA, it is starting to get very remote from here. And the stunning beaches just kept coming.
Esperance is a nice little town, but a lot smaller than Albany. You can read about its history here if you like, but one of its earliest claims to fame was as the “gateway to the Goldfields” when the jetty was constructed in 1890.
Another of Esperance’s claims to fame I wasn’t aware of was that in 1979, pieces of the space station Skylab crashed onto Esperance after it broke up over the Indian Ocean.
The municipality fined the United States $400 for littering.[17] The fine was paid in April 2009, when radio show host Scott Barley of Highway Radio raised the funds from his morning show listeners, and paid the fine on behalf of NASA.[18] Skylab’s demise was an international media event, with merchandising, wagering on time and place of re-entry, and nightly news reports. The San Francisco Examiner offered a $10,000 prize for the first piece of Skylab to be delivered to their offices. Seventeen-year-old Stan Thornton scooped a few pieces of Skylab off the roof of his home in Esperance, caught the first flight to San Francisco, and collected the prize. (Wikipedia)
What a clever fella.
Nicole and I did a walk along the waterfront and on to the jetty, looping back through the CBD. The Esperance CBD did indeed have a bakery, and their sausage roll game was quite good (blog post to come).
The next day we set off early to do Esperance’s Great Ocean Drive — a 40-kilometre circular loop featuring (more) stunning beaches, rocky headlands, small bays and steep cliffs. Putting all of the photos we took into the right beaches for the Map section was a bit maddening as all of the beaches and headlands look quite similar, but all stunning. Here are some photos to show you what I mean, noting that all of these are less than 20km drive from the Esperance CBD. Amazing!
At the end of the loop is Pink Lake. We’d seen a pink lake on the western coast of WA near Gregory and were wondering how this one compared. Well, for a start, it wasn’t pink. The first thing you see is a sign saying the lake isn’t pink and explaining why. But this didn’t appear in any of the brochures now did it?
Anyway, we had a really nice chat to a couple of fellow travellers who were resting for a coffee stop.
Before we headed home, we made our last stop Lucky Bay Brewing. We’d seen so many breweries along our travels that I’d wanted to try, but the timing wasn’t right. Lucky Bay is a stunning beach to the east of Esperance (voted best beach in the world in 2023 by the way) which is also famous for kangaroos hopping around on the beach, hence the kangaroo theme on the logo. Lucky Bay is our next stop after Esperance, so stay tuned for that blog post.
On this occasion, Nicole very graciously agreed to be designated driver so that I could sample a tasting paddle. Thanks very much Nicole!
It was a beautiful day and, as it turns out, we were lucky to arrive when we did as a wedding was taking place that afternoon and the whole place was shutting early accordingly. So, the brewery visit was meant to be! Nice place for a wedding too.
The unanimous beer winner (Nicole had some sneaky samples too) was their ‘Figure of 8’ Session Ale, so we bought a 10 pack on the way out. And lunch was great too. What a great spot!
That night, our last night in Esperance (staying at the lovely RAC Esperance Holiday Park), the Brisbane Lions were playing Carlton in the first week of the 2024 AFL Finals Series. Nicole and I were prepared and thoroughly enjoyed Brisbane’s win. And there definitely weren’t 10 Lucky Bay ‘Figure 8’ Session Ales left in the fridge when the full-time siren sounded.
So, a very nice way to end our very pleasant stay in Esperance. Next stop, Lucky Bay Beach on Cape Le Grand.
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