Esperance to The West Coast (By Simon)

Given we have already done the southwest corner of WA our plan was to cut the corner and drive from Esperance across to the west coast. This turned out to be a good plan as the weather turned bad the morning we left Esperance.

From Esperance we headed across to Wave Rock where we hiked around the rock and to Hippo's Yawn and made our contribution to some rock piles.

We then continued to a free camp at Gorge Pool Rock (just out of Corrigin) were we arrived just before dark to set up and have a quick dinner. In the morning the rain had cleared a little allowing us to hike up the rock and around the pool. The rain set in again and we packed up and set off again, driving around Perth heading to Lancelin on the West Coast. It wasn't long until we had our first glimpse of the Indian Ocean.

After Lunch at Lancelin, we went sand boarding down the massive sand dunes along the coast... great fun and we are still trying to get the sand out of our hair!

After driving a little further up the coast and reading weather warnings of "damaging coastal winds" we headed inland at Cervantes for another roadside free camp. Even though we were in a sheltered site it was a long windy night!

The next stop was Nambung National Park to see the Pinnacles. After a quick stop at the visitor information centre (nicely designed to fit into the surrounding dunes) we hiked and drove around the Pinnacles which was great... the highlight being a family of Emu's running right past us.

 

 

Mid morning we left Nambung and drove the remaining stretch to Kalbarri National Park with an unplanned stop at Port Gregory to see the Pink Lake... quite beautiful in the fading light.

At the end of the day we reached "Murchison House Station", our accommodation at Kalbarri, but that's another story for another night as the internet is painfully slow (and gets worse the further north we go)!.


Travel Log:
- Esperance to Corrigin: 491 km
- Corrigin to Lancelin: 352 km
- Lancelin to Kalbarri: 450 km
Total: 4400km