A quick two night stop in Esperance before travelling further east allowed us only one day for a snapshot look around the town of Esperance and it’s beaches.

The day started off cloudy and windy. Esperance is notorious for it’s winds, but Paul and I, having had two wonderful trips to the area previously, had never experienced ‘windy Esperance’ before. We soon realised we had been just plain lucky on those two trips. On this occasion nature let rip, and we experienced the full force of the Great Southern’s winds. As the day progressed the clouds slowly lifted. The sky turned to a brilliant clear blue above us, the suns rays lit up the dazzling white sand beneath our feet, the the turquoise waters for which Esperance is famous for, took our breath away with such beauty that has to be seen to be believed.

The next day we headed east towards Cape Arid. Our friends, Kaye and Brian spent the the next six nights at Lucky Bay in the Cape le Grande National Park, whilst Paul, myself and Mr Tilly travelled a bit further to the dog friendly caravan park on the Duke of Orleans Bay. For the six nights whilst we stayed there the wind blew, and blew and blew….. Whilst the wind wasn’t conducive to swimming most days, it certainly didn’t detract from the beauty.

Most days the temperature was in the low to mid 20s, but one day it soared up to 43°c. Now, anyone who knows me well will attest to the fact that it has to be 40° in the shade for me to venture fully into the water, especially the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean. Needless to say the day certainly qualified. After our swim we tried to relax under the shade of our beach umbrella on the sand, but with the wind still blowing a gale the umbrella wasn’t going to stay put for long. It was clearly to hot to even enjoy the beach. We headed back to our caravan to sit in air conditioned comfort with a good book.

I need to digress here a little….. Whilst we were in Broome last winter, a fellow blogger, Miriam, who writes a blog titled Out and About, and who also writes feature articles for the magazines – Outback Max, On the Road, and RV Touring & Accessories, happened to be touring our Western Australia. I had hoped our paths would cross at some stage and we could perhaps arrange to meet up. However, after Miriam’s latest blog post it seemed that our paths weren’t destined to cross. They had been in the Esperance area and had headed west again to Hopetoun. On the day when it had reach 43° in Esperance they were a little further west experiencing the same fierce heat and winds, but with the added threat of a lightening ignited, out of control bushfire giving them cause for concern. Read about their experience on the same day here… https://outanabout.com/2022/02/13/from-wave-rock-to-the-south-west-coast/

Fast forward a couple of days…. The only place where internet access is good at the Duke of Orlean’s caravan park is on the verandah of the shop, so at the beginning and end of each day campers vie for a seat at one of the tables on the verandah to get their daily technology fix. Paul was inside the shop buying us a cup of soft serve ice cream to enjoy as we perused our emails. I tucked Tilly into a corner at the far end of the verandah and settled in to wait for my ice cream. A glance towards the neighbouring table, and surprise of surprises – there sat Miriam with her partner Doug, settled in to get her next next article safely off to the editors of one of her magazines.

“Miriam”? I questioned. She looked at me very puzzled, ”Do I know you”, she said. Once I related how I knew her we both quite excited at the chance encounter in such an out of the way place as the Duke of Orleans Bay Caravan park. We arranged happy hour drinks together that night, and quickly caught up again the following morning before we hitched up and headed back to Esperance for another four nights.

So here we are now, back in Esperance for four nights. The winds have dropped, the temperature’s rising, and those beaches are calling to me. Time to go and get my togs on …..