12 September 2024
From Esperance, Nicole and I headed for Cape Le Grand National Park, just under an hour’s drive east. With no caravan park there, we booked ourselves into the Lucky Bay Campground, run by the National Park and unpowered.
As we arrived at the NP entrance and got out to pay our entry fee, we had a quick chat to a quite elderly couple doing the same. They had been coming there for I forget how many years for their wedding anniversary. When I mentioned that the weather didn’t look good at all (being very overcast), he said that every time they had come here it had been blue sky by the time they reached the water. While I loved his optimism, I personally didn’t share it.
Our first stop was Le Grand Beach. Unfortunately, on this overcast and rainy morning, with the beach covered in seaweed, this beach didn’t live up to its name at all.
The next stop was Hellfire Bay. This beach showed a lot of promise, but the rain started soon after we arrived and cut our visit short. We came back twice more to this beach to try to get some good photos. First time it was overcast and raining. Second time it was overcast. And the third time wasn’t much better. Oh well …
Next stop was Frenchman Peak Lookout. This first time we stopped here the weather was terrible and so we didn’t do much of the walk. Besides, while you can do the walk all the way to the top along the granite rock face, with the rain and wet surfaces it would be very slippery indeed.
A few days later when we were leaving Cape Le Grand NP early in the morning, ahead of a long drive to Kalgoorlie, we had this view. What a difference a day makes!
Then it was on to Whistling Rock and Thistle Cove.
Whistling Rock definitely lived up to its name. It’s slightly concave in shape, so that when you stand at the right distance in front of it the rock face reflects and focuses the sound of the waves crashing straight to you. Very cool indeed!
Thistle Cove Itself was spectacular, especially with better weather by this stage — a combination of a beautiful beach with stunning headland and waves crashing over it.
This was a favourite spot in Cape Le Grand NP for both me and Nicole, and we planned to do the walk from Lucky Beach Campground back to here the next day to have another look. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do this as from the next day Parks and Wildlife had planned burnings in this part of the NP (right next to our campground as it turned out), so it was closed. ☹️
Then we arrived at Lucky Beach Campground. We had heard great things from other travellers about this place, plus had heard it was voted the world’s best beach in 2023, so our expectations were high. You could only book a site generally, and not a specific site number, plus we weren’t meant to “check in” until 2:00pm. We arrived at 12:15pm to have a look, where another camper told us not to worry about it and just grab a spot. Which we did.
As luck would have it, the best site in the campground (subsequently verified by the campground volunteer and several other fellow travellers walking past) was available, so we grabbed it quick smart. And this is the view we had. AMAZING!!
You can see in one of the photos literally what the view out of our window was, including a couple of kangaroos if you look closely. Throughout our stay we would be sitting outside the motorhome and kangaroos would just amble up to our site to nibble on grass a few metres from the motorhome and then just lie down for a rest. With flushable toilets, a camp kitchen with hot water, warm showers, and rubbish bins provided — all for $40 per night — this really is as good as it gets.
It will come as no surprise that we quickly ended up extending our one-night stay to three nights, and even then, thought about staying longer. We did have a fair bit of ground to cover before we meet up with Katelyn in Perth on 17 September, so we decided to move on after three nights.
And, to really relax into the Lucky Bay mood, we cracked a couple of Lucky Bay ‘Figure of 8’ Session Ales (refer previous post on Esperance). What a way to finish off a busy but great day.
After a rest day (still trying to finally see off this cold) we drove to Wharton Beach on the other (eastern) side of the NP. The weather was great and the beach, once again, magnificent. The view from the headland was particularly good.
Little Wharton Beach, on the other side of the headland, wasn’t nearly as picturesque, but still nice in its own way.
On the way home we stopped at Condingup Tavern. For a very, very small country town, the tavern was particularly nice. Nicole and I decided to share a hamburger and a medium potato wedges. We should have gone for the small wedges though, as the medium was enormous! But we finished them anyway.
After three nights our toilet cassette was getting full (nighttime use only), which we couldn’t empty in the NP, plus our water was running low. So it was, very unfortunately, time to leave Lucky Bay. It was very, very hard to leave, especially with this sunrise view as we headed off at around 6:45am.
So long Lucky Bay, we will definitely be back one day!
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