I took a punt out to Cape Le Grand National Park today, a 50 kms jaunt to the whitest beach I've ever been on, and better still, I got to ride along it, legitimately.
The ranger said I could, and a few other vehicles came along after me and did the same, so it must have been OK. Actually, its a proper route between two of the bays, subject to tide and sand conditions.
It was beautiful down there; white, white sand and beautifully clear aquamarine water, backed by some very weirdly eroded hills.
This area all used to be underwater millions of years ago and the peaks would either have been completely submerged or just poking out of the water. One of the info boards down there reckoned that the water was deeper by 300m. And that's a lot of water.
I stayed down there for a couple of hours, doing nothing in particular other than just looking at the sea and wandering along the beach. It was nice to have some down time, particularly after the past few days of hard riding.
The road to the park passed through a tree farm, various lots of uniform gum trees all planted in neat rows. The lots varied in height from saplings to fully grown big trees, all as straight as, and being cultivated for commercial purposes.
But most curious of all along the same road was a full reproduction of Stone Henge. Known as the Esperance Stone Henge, its actually a homage to the original in Wiltshire, UK and is billed as one of the area's attractions. But why would anybody build something like that in the first place, but more to the point, why in a field outside a town on the south coast of Australia? Bizarre, full on Disney and too perfect. And no, I didn't go in; I've seen the real one, many times.
I had a poke around Esperance itself, and found another claim to fame - second only to the repo Stone Henge - is that it was the site of Australia's first wind farm, built in 1987.
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