Esperance

We decided to spend Easter in Esperance, a town on the South coast 9 hours drive from Perth. I had to go and visit the port and it seemed like a cool pace to visit anyway. Up at 4am on Good Friday and after a false start we finally left Perth at about 5.30am.

We go to drive though the Perth hills to the East of the city, which was a lovely rural region with a lot more green than we'd though it would be. After 4.5 hours driving we hit Hyden which has a rock formation that looks like a wave and a cave with some aboriginal art. The highlight was probably the service stations where we saw how the Aussies holiday. One family had loaded up their HGV with one 4x4 with no back door and a quad bike inside. Behind that there was another 4x4 with the dog in it. The family squeezed in the HGV cab for the journey to who knows where.

Anyway we finally arrived in Esperance by about 4pm. We were invited to the harbour master's house for a drink in the evening and he had a great house with a balcony overlooking the port. The result of that little encounter was that we were both invited to have a free helicopter trip courtesy of the port and a 4x4 trip along the beach to see all the best sights of the region.

I had an early start on Saturday to see a ship moor in the port and then Becks joined us and we jumped in Rob's 4x4 and drove the length of Esperance bay along the beach, up some big and steep rocks, and round to Australia's whitest beach. Amazing stuff and you could only access it with a 4x4.

We then headed to the new Stone Henge. We had though this sounded a bit naff, but Rob to
us the story behind it. A guy in Albany decided to build a stone henge as a tourist attraction and had a guy in Esperance make the stones. The guy from Albany went bust and the guy who