West Oz – Pt III: Esperance

Leaving Albany we had planned on getting a few things for the road but we had also forgotten Australia shuts down on Good Friday – nothing open accept a gas station (luckily!). On the way out of Albany I also fell into a speeding trap and I am eagerly awaiting a ticket in the mail – unsigned speed camera in a 90km area about four hundred metres from the start of 110km speed zone – get me out of Albany.

The drive from Albany to Esperance is 500km and there are two small towns (two gas stations, no fast food chain, and a pub type towns) to pass through – and I don’t mean that you travel on a freeway and bypass the towns, there is no freeway and no bypass. Luckily the vegetation changes a lot as you go and it is really beautiful in many places. Getting back to the point I was about to make – before we left Seattle Kelly and I were enjoying a meat pie in Burien (outside of Seattle) and there was a large map of Australia on the wall, we decided to do the “spin around five times and put your finger on the map thing” and one of the places we hit was this dinky little town called Ravensthorpe – well Ravensthorpe is one of the two towns that we passed through so we had some personal excitement for the drive.

We made Esperance late in the afternoon and my sister and her family were already there having driven from Perth the day before. After getting settled our first trip was to this old wooden pier that in its day was used to transport iron ore to ships out in the bay but now supports about 500 fisher people. There is a very smart (and very fat) sea lion that basically lives at the pier eating the scraps when fish are cleaned after being caught. Luca enjoyed seeing the sea lion and he also helped his cousin Emilly catch a fish – he was so excited about the fish flapping around on the hook that he kissed it (see pic below).

Esperance sells itself as having the best beaches in Australia – it may have the best beaches in the world. The coastline down here is crazy beautiful (my pictures do not do it justice). We had a fun time swimming at a beach with dolphins, visiting an petting zoo, Luca got to ride a miniature train, I ventured to the pub to watch some footy – but basically we just hung out a lot with my sister and her family. It was also an adventure packing all four of us in a small hotel room. From his cot next to our bed, Luca made regularly commentary through the night – mostly telling me to stop moving so much.