To Esperance

Yet again, despite getting up and showered early, I was late setting off, largely because I got talking to Phil and Marilyn who had camped next to me. Originally from the UK, they’re from Brisbane, and touring round in a small panel van which Phil fitted with a bed and storage space. 

We had a good old jaw about travelling and how you just have to get on and do it, and not be swayed by other people's doubts and expectations. They originally came to Australia in 1972 but then went back to the UK by land, taking public transport, which took them nine and a half months. I always love hearing people’s travel stories, particularly when they are unusual or tortuous or just not done.

In turn, they were interested in what I am up to and how little we all need to live. Definitely fellow devotees of the ‘ go and do it and do it with what you’ve got’ club.

I also picked up a hitchhiker - a stick insect who coasted all the way to Esperance with me.

After the last few days, and in particular, the mammoth distance yesterday, I was after a shorter, easier day, as was poor old Gerty. She did so well across the Nullarbor that I felt almost guilty starting her up again this morning and expecting her to carry me 200 kms southwards to Esperance. But that’s exactly what I did, although we did stop quite a bit just to look at stuff, take pictures, or just because we did.

Before we left,however, I booked a place at the YHA in Esperance. After last night’s campsite rip off, I decided to take a bed there for $28.00 instead of a patch of gravel for $33.00. It also took the pressure off having to find a place to sleep upon arrival, and as Esperance is a seaside holiday type of place, it was unlikely that there would be many free camps for a swag at least, nearby. Good call that one because there weren’t and the campsite was even more outrageous - $34.00. Bugger that. So I booked it for two nights so that I can explore tomorrow.

The tin camels are just down the road, so I had a quick butchers at them. They represent the camel trains that used to be the main beasts of burden here and up through the arid areas in the days before road, rail and air freight. I presume it means that several people now have camel shaped holes cut in their roof as corrugated tin seems to be the common raw material round here.

The route down here was just straight highway, passing through the usual dried lakes, gum trees, and further south, grassy pasture. 

The Bromus Dam lies just off the highway, south of Norseman. 

It was constructed so that steam trains would have water as they chugged between  Esperance and Kalgoorlie. It disused now, except by the March flies and a few fish.

It follows the railway line, and at one place there was a whole heap of freight carriages strewn alongside the track, upside down, on their sides, all skewed. At first I thought it was a rail junk yard but theses were big old trucks and the way they were scattered suggests that it was actually a train that had been derailed some years earlier and been left in situ.

Very odd. But there were also a few small towns along the way, such as Salmon Gums, where I stopped for a drink. 

I wandered into the local store and it was like stepping back 40 years.

Homemade wooden shelves, stock which looked very dated, and a delightful old man from Newbury, Berkshire behind the counter. I bought a ginger beer from his fridge and drank it while he told me all about how he and his wife had arrived in Australia in 1966 - along with the metric system, and had only been back to the UK once, and that was to his mother’s funeral. He’d apparently worked in central Sydney for years but moved to Western Australia when his wife decided to run the post office for her sister who had married a farm worker who had been moved to a farm 200 kms away. he joined his wife after he retired. Now she’s tied to the house as she has kidney problems, and was on the dialysis in the back room as we chatted. All this information in the space of 10 minutes and a small ginger beer; a lovely gentle old bloke but I wonder what he would have told me over a pint. 

I eventually got the Esperence by mid afternoon. 

It was quite windy and a bit cold as a result of being right on the ocean.  Its a fair sized town spread out along the coast with the whitest of white sand and an archipelago just off the shore - the Bay of Isles. Depending on the weather, I might have an explore out that way tomorrow, but I’ll have a poke around the town a bit first.