Well, Esperance did indeed turn out to be absolutely gorgeous.
What they didn’t tell me though, was how it blows a freakin’ gale for 20 hours EVERY day.
No, I’m NOT kidding!
It stops around midnight and then starts to pick up again around 4:00 am… although, I shouldn’t say “starts to pick up” as it’s more like someone just flicked the switch. Dead still one moment, blowin’ a gale 5 seconds later.
And when you’re sleeping in a tent, that plastic flapping in the wind gets old real fast!
There’s a great pub down on the foreshore called The Pier. They have two sets of doors, set at right angles to each other. You come in from the gale outside into the airlock, and then you pass into the pub through the second set of doors. Gives you an idea of how perpetually windy this place is.
I guess I’m not painting a very appealing picture of Esperance here, eh?
That’s a shame, ’cause it really is a lovely town, the people we spoke with were all really helpful, and the drive we took out to Cape le Grand National Park was totally worth it.
And the beaches were absolutely everything we were promised.
Crystal clear torqoise water and the finest white talcum powder-like sand.
There is even a spot at Hellfire Bay where there is a picnic and bbq area close to the beach, and the kangaroos hang around waiting for the tourists to throw them scraps of food. First time I have ever seen kangaroos get that close to salt water.
After our afternoon at Cape le Grand, we headed back into town for some dinner at the aforementioned Pier Hotel.
Sitting there having dinner (around 7:00 pm), it became apparent that we were in for another gorgeous sunset (the sun wasn’t setting ’til around 8:00 pm at this time of year). So we headed down to the actual pier (from whence the hotel derives its name, apparently).
The moon was rising over the pier and afforded some great shots. The second of these two images would have to be up there in my top 5 images from this trip. Another canvas to order!
Tech info for the photographers reading this: cropped from a 20mm wide angle lens, 200 iso, ND+4 filter (for some extra shutter love), GradND+8 filter, 104 sec, f16, plus some off-camera flash manually fired twice from different angles to bring out the rocks.
