As I said in my last blog post we were heading to Esperance for a weeks holiday.
Esperence is nearly 700 kilometres away from Bunbury so we prepared for a long 8 hour drive.
So on Friday 13th, we got up early, loaded up the Ute, packed an Eski full of rolls and snacks and we were on the road by 6.15! Excellent.
The route to Esperence goes through the grain producing area known as the Wheatbelt or Goldbelt, its approx fifteen million hectares of arable land!
There is one road, which is used by everyone, including the huge lorries transporting the grain, these can be up to 60 meters in length and for that reason they are called ‘Road Trains’
We were quite lucky that the grain harvest had already been completed so there weren’t many ‘Road Trains’ to try and overtake! 😳 I did some of the driving and had to negotiate overtaking 2 together, I opted to do them 1 at a time, it’s a a little scary! 😧
There are a few large lakes on route but pretty much all of them were completely dry.
The road trip there was actually really good, we stopped a few times in little towns and arrived in Esperence earlier than we thought, around 1.30pm.
The town itself is quite small but very lovely. We were staying in town in a house, which was large and comfy and a short walk to the foreshore.
We were a little early to check in so we had lunch at a lovely restaurant, The Quarters, down by the beach. Had a little mooch about, grabbed some essentials from the supermarket then chilled back at the house.
Saturday morning our plan was to do a nice nature walk around one of the lakes nearby in a place called Monjingup. The weather was not ideal, a little grey and some drizzle. Unfortunately when we arrived at the lake it was closed for an event, some sort of light show.
We decided to drive and check out the Pink Lake, sadly it wasn’t pink or anything at all as it was dried up! Apparently the lake has been dry for over 11 years. It’s still very pretty as the lake bed is completely white.
We then decided to do the Ocean Drive, which I have to say was nothing short of spectacular!
Esperence is on the Southern Ocean.
Our first stop was 11 mile Beach, wild and gorgeous, it was quite windy and still cloudy but this didn’t detract from how stunning it was.
There are lots of beaches, 10 mile, 9 mile, (I wanted a pic of me at 8 mile, sadly it was called something else! )
Most of the beaches are accessible, with boardwalks and some of them have toilets which are clean and well maintained! 😍
At Observatory Point (or 8 mile!) there was a lookout and a rocky outcrop, Rebecca & Chris climbed up to the lookout and Anita and I stayed down watching the view. The water was a beautiful turquoise colour and then I spotted something in the water, I wasn’t sure at first what I was seeing but then realised it was dolphins!! It ended being a pod of around 15 Dolphins in the shallows! It was so fabulous, I was very excited. I think that the most I’ve seen together. 🐬🐬💙🐬
From here we drove to Twilight Beach, very accessible, a large sandy beach and amazing rocks in the bay. We went down onto the beach and had a paddle, Chris braved it and went in for a swim!
Again, the colour of the ocean is beautiful.
From here we headed back into town, the weather brightened up so we had some time on the beach.
The beach area in town is fantastic, it has Shark netting, always good to see. It had jetty’s for jumping from, swimming lanes and also a shady area on the foreshore with toilets and showers, pretty impressive!
After our beach time we went to visit the local Gin Distillery, did a very pleasant tasting for $5
From there we headed to the pub for some much needed Holiday Cocktails!! The pub was great, nice views, great drinks, fab staff. It’s called 33 degrees, if you’re ever in Esperence and fancy a drink!
We had a really lovely first full day.
Sunday saw us going to visit the local market. We had decided to go there earlyish and grab breakfast from some of the food stalls.
The market was lovely, smallish but lots of locals selling their wares.
It was held down amongst some little old buildings that had craft shops and galleries in.
It was fairly busy, but I do need to clarify at this point, what I mean by Busy, I mean Busy by Western Australian standards, this bears no resemblance to Busy by UK standards! There were a few people around, and you may have to queue behind one other person to get a coffee! 😂
I opted for some Sri Lankan veggie roties! Yummy 😋 Rebecca, Chris & Anita got full breakfast wraps. We then found a little stall selling freshly made doughnuts in cinnamon sugar. I don’t really like doughnuts, but these were delicious.
Interestingly, a lady at the stall next door, who was from Devon heard me talking and said she recognised my accent as being either Devon or Cornwall! I didn’t think I had an accent at all! 😂
We had a lovely walk along the foreshore up to the Jetty, grabbed a coffee from a really cute little Coffee Caravan. Then Rebecca had a brilliant idea for us to drive out to a place called Wharton Beach, located in the Duke of Orleans Bay, around a 40 minute drive out of town.
Well, I don’t know what to say, if I thought the beaches we had seen yesterday were beautiful, this was on another level.
Absolutely stunning. It’s a beach that you can drive on, so lots of Australians take their 4 x 4 vehicles down onto the sand and set up camp. We opted to walk down.
I’m wasn’t far from the car to the beach with our stuff, chairs, awning, Eski.
We were tucked away towards the end of the beach and it was simply glorious.
White sandy beach, turquoise crystal clear water, sunshine and a breeze! 🏖️🤍🩵💙 although there were people on the beach it wasn’t crowded or noisy, not a scrap of littler in site.
We all went into the Ocean, it was cold but gorgeous.
We spent all afternoon chilling on the beach watching the dogs and kids playing in the water, reading and relaxing.
We had decided to stop in the nearby pub on the way home, called Condingup Tavern, Mmm, well we stopped, walked in, got weird vibes, a little bit odd, not many people, apart from a wall of locals propping up the bar, no one spoke to us, there was no staff around. We opted to find another pub!!
We drove back to Esperence and went to the local Brewery, Lucky Bay Brewery, who just happened to be celebrating their 9th anniversary! So it was a big old party going on, Live Music, dancing, water slide, pizzas! It was a perfect way to end a beautiful day. 🎉❤️
On Monday, Rebecca & Chris went to do a coastal hike. Anita I I stayed in Esperence and went on a walk to find a cafe with WiFi.
The reason we needed to do this is because WiFi is a little tricky to get in Australia. The house we were renting didn’t have internet, very strange. 😳 Very few cafes, restaurants or bars have WiFi and with Rebecca and Chris off on their walk we couldn’t Hot Spot, which isn’t always possible anyway.
So with this in mind we went into town, had a little look around then drove to The Quarters for a coffee, it was closed.
We walked to the pub, 33 degrees, they had WiFi but no coffee.
We went back into town, to a little Cafe near where the Market had been, that was closed.
We asked someone, they said that a place called Cloud 11 was good. That was also closed. 🥺
We eventually found somewhere with coffee & WiFi on our 4th attempt!! 😂
The positive outcome of this was we stumbled on a fantastic Deli, called Deli King, that does the most amazing sandwiches and coffee!
Rebecca and Chris got back from their walk and we all chilled out for the day. 😎
On Tuesday morning Rebecca and Chris went back to Monjingup Lake for a walk, Anita and I walked into town to get some bits and bobs, books, gifts etc. we managed to get a coffee in Cloud 11, and admire their wonderful Christening tree made of succulents! 💚🎄
We grabbed delicious lunch sandwiches from Deli King and all of us spent the afternoon at Twighlight beach. It was beautiful but very windy, so we ended up doing that very British thing of sitting on the beach wrapped up in jumpers!! 😂
Despite the cold we still had an ice cream in the way home.
We saw a very pretty sunset at West Beach.
Due to the number of photos I want to post, I’m going to split this blog into 2!
This is part 1.
Hereandthereclaire.com 