Around Oz the First Time - Chapter 81 - Albany to Esperance

The Henry Lawson poem, The Man from Snowy River has a line, “and they halted cowed and beaten, and he turned their heads for home”, and today signified the beginning of our travels east and eventually home. “Cowed and beaten” not, still with an expectation of things to. The Nullarbor awaits, as does Streaky Bay, not to mention a baby to introduce ourselves to, now we have had our whooping cough boosters.

But for now, we are heading to Esperance, a place we missed on our previous trip here, because everything in the terms of motels, was booked out. Here we have just missed the agricultural show, which would have made finding spots difficult, but in any event, we are staying at Lucky Bay, a place in the national park right by the beach, some 50 kilometres past Esperance.

The trip will be long, some 538 kilometres, so we are at it early. An 8.30am departure and immediately there is consternation over the GPS systems. Ours, obviously the older version, wants to take us, more or less, through the middle of town, while the Tom-Toms seem to want to take us towards Emu Point, which we, from yesterday’s jaunt out there, “know” is a dead end.

I call an intervention, and we head towards the town centre. About halfway up the street, Forbsy ducks right, but I am able to stop Silver Leader from the same “mistake” and we continue. Forbsy is soon out of UHF range, so we know not where he is. Prudently we are on the road to Esperance via the highway, and thinking Forbsy is behind us, take it slowly. His Tom-Tom has taken him a significantly shorter way to the road, and he is way in front of us. Not to worry we are all together soon enough and chewing up the kilometres.

Albany begs another visit, with much more time to explore, but for now we head east, through lush pastures and bushland. Soon enough we are back in the wheat belt, with the yellowing of crops as far as the eye can see. Some already harvested as hay are laying ready for rolling. Others, with still a tinge of green to them, await final ripening before the harvester releases the grin from its husks.

The crops on this side of Perth seem much more productive than north of the capital. Even more so here, the thickness and height of the crops is significantly greater. Now and again there are alternative crops, oats and canola, as well as fallow ground that seems to have self-sown itself with thistles and other non-productive flora.

As Rick Wakeman, paraphrasing Jules Verne in his Journey to the Centre of the Earth, “the walls (read here the ground) imperceptible changes from brilliant green to bright orange”, so does the land here. What was rich green at Albany soon becomes, not only the yellow of ripening crops but also the fallow land and the bush change almost back to the harsh aridness of pre-Perth. Although the rivers are flowing, they are by no means rushing torrents of water, dams in various places are dry, or near dry, even though from time to time there is water laying by the road.

We pass silos and grain storage facilities, the silos adorned with art, beacons to the sameness of the land, if you are led to believe that. There is the obligatory road works. Not sure why we need to slow to 80kph at some stages, because although it is Sunday and no one is working the sites, there also appears not to be any disturbance in the road surface at all. Very suspect if you ask me. We do get to a bridge being worked on where we need to stop at a red light, there are people working here, and the bridge is only half useful, with the other side merely a big hole. I muse with Forbsy that if I were to move the “wingnut” mirror over just a little bit, I could put at least one of the works into the river below.

Kilometre after seemingly endless kilometre, broken only by being overtaken. Sometimes by the same vehicle again and again. More than one occurrence of this event, of note a commercial fisherman, who passes, then pulls off to the side to re-strap one of his eskies, pass us again, and then for some other reason, passes us yet again.

WE catch up with him at our lunch stop, and I wander over to say hello. He is a bream and mullet fisherman, heading out for a week not far from here. He will net the rivers close to their mouths and hope to get fish to the freezer trucks in Esperance Tuesday and Thursday this week and head home Friday. He is an amiable man, willing to talk. I speak of watching the professionals off Seal Rocks beach pull in a 10-tonne haul of bream at one time. Not wanting to sound like he is bragging, he and his mates took 102-tonne haul of salmon form the local beaches here in one hit. That must have been something to see.

He heads off only needing to complete another 80 kilometres or so whereas we are just shy of 250 left to go. Not far from town, we see Silver Leader engage 3 emus on the road. The terrified birds do exactly what they shouldn’t, and although Silver Leader misses them, the closest he came was less than 10 metres. When they get their breath back, we quiz Rosalie as to whether she caught the incident on her phone. Silver Leader retorts, all there was, was grabbing the Jesus bar and saying “S%#t, S%#, S%#t” or something to that effect.

Robyn manages to get a blurry picture of the emus as we pass them soon after.

As much as we can we try to assist drivers to pass us, and most give us a hearty wave, or a flash of the hazard lights as a thank you. Some obviously don’t need assistance, overtaking on double yellow lines or as we get to crests of hills. Impatience kills.

At one stage there would be no impatience as a line of police cars either coming back from Esperance or heading to Albany pass on the other side of the road. Highway patrol, police busses and unmarked vehicles, all pass over a 15 minute period. Conversation on the UHF tries to understand this procession. I suggest the show in Esperance is the issue, either a display or overzealous crowd control, or as Silver Leader suggests, they are heading for Albany to keep the multitudes of grey nomads there on the national convention, in line. In any event, it passed away the time.

Silver Leader calls a break, and we take the chance to change drivers. Robyn will drive the last 125 kilometres. I take to catching up on messages, sending some photos to various people and making comments on them, it passes the time. Intermittently I take photos as well.

All of a sudden, we are in Esperance, and the fight with the Tom-Tom and the GPS continues, and we think we may have sorted out one of the issues. Silver Leader suggests we are turning right shortly, when clearly our GPS contradicts that thought. Forbsy agrees with me, and we suggest to Silver Leader we are going his “other right” and without issue, he suggests, that is what he said – left. We think he is dyslexic, which would explain a lot.

Skirting around Esperance, we head into the national park. There are lots of internationally significant wetlands, and the GPS seems to agree, as there are lots of blue patches showing up. The grass has become that lovely deep green again as we pass the town. There is a tribute to StoneHenge we pass, boarded by a large opaque fence, making shots from the Cruiser impossible, they want their $10 entry fee for us to see it. Maybe tomorrow.

At the park entrance we stop to show our credentials, but there is no one home. We drive onto the camp site, where we are met by the camp hosts. They direct us to our spots. Silver Leader’s spot is already taken, by a female kangaroo and joey. Apparently oblivious to any danger, they simply sit there eating away at the fauna on the side of the site, even as Silver Leader backs right up to them.

With Silver Leader where he is, I cannot get to my spot, so I ask him to move out so I can move head on into his spot, then reverse into mine, which he does. The camper next to him offers to move his vehicle, but I am OK. All this happens while the kangaroo and joey continue to eat.

Finally onto our spot, and Silver Leader into his, we settle the van and break out the beer o’clock cheese and bikkies. Forbsy, who is a little up the hill joins us, having sorted his van out in a flash it seems. As we settle down to the nibbles, the camp hosts come by and finalise the paperwork, another kangaroo hops by, between 2 people talking, who I might add were no more than a metre apart.

The sun is setting, and I go for a wander to see if I can capture it, given there are lots of clouds around, it could be quite spectacular tonight. My efforts are rewarded with some amazing “silver lining” shots, if not the actual sunset, which I miss. As well as the sunset I get quite good vista shots in the fading light. I head back to the van, sneaking a couple of flashed shots of wildflowers as well. I rarely use the flash as I find the camera is good enough to adjust to the light

As I return, the others are preparing for a beach walk in the twilight. The sand here is bleached white and the azure water rolls over it, backwards and forwards, simply cleaning it more. There is enough light in the sunset to allow me to take some shots of everyone on the sand with the sunset behind them, as well as some panoramas of the beach, including one with Robyn in the middle of the shot.

It is almost dark to the naked eye as we return to the van, but I am still able to take shots in “Night” mode, without a flash and have them create ooh’s and ahh’s from the others, marvelling at the abilities of the Samsung.

I ate too much at beer o’clock and do not need dinner, whereas Robyn has a hankering for Pumpkin Soup, personally made by her of course. Tomorrow we will be exploring Esperance and what it has to offer, but for now, long drive behind us, its time for bed.