Gibb River #4,

The blog list keeps growing with now 44 readers not only from Australia but the UK, Norway and Canada too.

Jackie and I are now in Esperance Western Australia, this has long been on our list to revisit as 11 years ago we absolutely loved it but because of lousy inclement weather cut our stay short. So today this lovely town on WA’s South coast greeted us with heavy rainfall and high winds and this is predicted to stay with us for another 4 days. Not to be beaten we have already booked an additional 2 nights to bring our stop here to 6 nights. We went for a sodden drive to Cape LeGrand but really it was raining that hard we could hardly see a bloody thing.

This area of OZ is renowned for its bright white sandy beaches and crystal clear turquoise waters and even though it was cloudy, rainy and miserable here is a sample of what Hell Fire Bay beach is like.

Cloudy, rainy and pretty cold and it still looks like this. This is the coldest we’ve been so far on this trip, today was 13°C, most of the trip has been about 17°-24° so that’s like a heat wave to my cold climate cousins but cool here for us. It’s not quite winter yet and the Outback can get pretty cold at night so we are prepared for chilly temperatures.

Before you ask, no Photoshop tricks have been made on these photos, just a little cropping and contrast adjustment. 

Until I get some more photos (and the birds come out of their hiding places) I’ll post some others that I have taken on this trip.

The ‘humble’ galah.

‘Black boys, grass trees. There’s heaps of them here that in the Eastern states you would pay a fortune for.

Esperance beaches are incredible. These photos are taken in cloudy, rainy and windy weather, the sea is unsettled due to the off-shore winds.

Of course it’s not only humans that love these beaches, the great white sharks do too, 4 deaths in the last 5 years, the last one in March this year.

Tomorrow is Wednesday 18th May so we will have been on the road for 3 weeks, covered 5,700 kilometres and spent 6 days in beautiful Esperance. This is truly one of our favourite towns in Australia even though it has rained and been quite windy for most of the time. The town is clean, neat and just the right size. It’s slightly smaller in population than Ulladulla (12,000 people vs 16,000) and that suits me just fine.

We need to keep rolling and heading west so tomorrow morning we hitch up the van and depart the magnificent, pristine, blood & gore soaked beaches and heading to Bremer Bay on our way to Albury. We’ll spend 2 nights in BB, do some washing and checkout the scenery.

I had a few problems with the drone today and had had plans to do another one of my panoramas of the Esperance area but let me tell you from experience, I do not fly the drone unless the drone is fully calibrated and the conditions are close to ideal, at least not off cliff tops or in dodgy weather. It’s OK, there’s plenty of this coastline to explore yet and the drone is now in perfect condition (so it tells me).

I hope you’ve enjoyed the Esperance area as much as Jack and I have, we’ve waited 11 years to revisit it and have not been disappointed. I’m not crossing this off my list to come back to despite the crappy weather and long distance from anywhere.

Have a look at some last photos from here and then we’ll move on.

The strangely-named Hell Fire Bay. A bit rough today but no signs of Great Whites.

Lucky Bay, I think. It’s beautiful but the recent storms dumped heaps of seaweed around. Imagine it here if the sun was shining…

How annoying, I’m travelling with my new (very expensive) camera (and a few others) and I take this shot with my iPhone. 

Mum and baby feeding in the parking lot of Lucky bay delighted some tourists from the UK and France. 

New Holland Honey Eater. 

Whistling Rock at Cape Le Grande. Has the unusual ability to whistle with the wind and if you stand in the right place it catches the sound of the sea and amplifies it. Sounds like a jet aircraft.

Why does Jackie always look like she is just tolerating me?

The seas were pretty rough due to the storms lately.

Australian Pied Oyster Catcher. I did manage to get some photos of the Australian Ringneck or ‘28’ but they didn’t turn out any good. Later,,,

After about an hour trying to calibrate the IMU & the compass on the drone, I decided to finally read the instructions and it was all over in about 30 seconds. I had depleted the main battery by then and decided to just take a snap of Jack and I to prove that we hadn’t murdered each other and leave the better drone shots for later.