Cape Le Grand National Park, WA

29th October to 2nd November.

WARNING THIS POST CONTAINS FAR MORE PHOTOS THAN WORDS…….THE WORDS SOMEHOW PALED IN COMPARISON TO THE IMAGES. Don’t worry I’ll make up for it in the next blog……

After we bade farewell to Shannon, Gerard and the kids we made our way about 45kms east of Esperance to the infamous Cape Le Grand National Park. We had earlier purchased a nice shiny new 12 month national parks sticker that we promptly popped on the front windscreen, so after checking in at the park entrance we headed on out to our campsite at Lucky Bay. Thankfully there were a few spare sites so we chose one with a bit of protection from the wind and set up for the next few days. We had found out a few months ago that upgrades were being done at Lucky Bay, but decided to still stay there in the hope that the works weren’t too disruptive. We found that whilst there was constant noise from the construction and landscaping works going on not far from camp we found that it didn’t really bother us that much. After we set up we went for an explore along the beach by foot, heading over to the big rocks to the western side of the bay to take some photos of the views and get a feel of the layout of the campsite.

We found the kangaroos to be quite tame, however we didn’t feed them, but obviously people have been as considering it is such a highly populated campground and now with the inclusion of trucks, bobcats and earth movers the kangaroos still didn’t batter an eyelid at their sometimes noisy surrounds.

The next day Shannon and Gerard rolled in and we set out for a day of exploring, but not before we grabbed a coffee at the coffee van that comes out to Lucky Bay and sets up on the beach most days of the week, unbelievable!!!!! After we had our caffeine fix we drove along the beach to the far east end for some views and stunning photos, made even more beautiful by a strategically placed sailing boat that had also decided to anchor in the bay for a few days.

After we literally had to drag ourselves away from Lucky Bay we took a drive back through Cape Le Grand to see if we could be equally impressed with what else she had to offer us, simple answer, HELL YES!!!

From Hellfire Bay we drove onto yet another beach which takes you the short cut way back to Wylie Beach just outside of Esperance. The ‘piece de resistance’ was the climb up the granite boulder at the end of the drive. Nik had seen Ron Moon drive it and had been harping on about it for the last 2 weeks, so together with Gerard and Shannon in their car we all drove up it, very, very, very carefully. Once at the top we took some photos and as Shannon and her kids were not very impressed with the drive up, they decided to walk back down instead whilst the guys had to carefully manoeuvre the cars back down and I played official photographer.

 

As we once again said goodbye to Shannon and Gerard, who were heading back to the caravan park in town we decided it would be quicker to drive back the way we came, so off we went back along the beach, loving every minute of it.

The next day we packed up and headed even further east to a place called Orleans Bay, setting up at the overly priced and overly valued caravan park, which was disappointing as this place had come well recommended to us. We were slogged $150 for 2 nights for a patch of grass with power and water……and then a further $20 to hire a fire pit…… The weather also turned on us here and it was cold, overcast and we even copped the eye of a massive storm on the second night that pretty much washed all our surroundings away!!! Whilst here we had lunch at the nearby Condingup Tavern, which was actually reasonably priced and had great food, and drove to Wharton Beach, which I’m sure on a good day would have been fabulous, however not real kid friendly as we spotted 4 rips in the space of 200 metres….. So after 2 nights we couldn’t wait to get out of there, even if the weather was awful and the park more expensive than a nugget of gold we found the  park owners cocky attitude whilst looking down at us from her three storey house was even more disappointing!!!!!

 

And so it was onto greener pastures we headed, on our way towards the next adventure and destination on our OZLAP………..