We headed towards Esperance.

When we had been planning the trip to Australia, we had been following a family who lived on the road in Oz on YouTube. >>Trip in a van<<. Justin, Bec and their three children. One of the places that they had visited really caught our eye, so we planned to go there too. This place was Esperance.

So off we went.

The drive was, yet again, a long one, but we were now getting used to driving for over 6 hours – sometimes 10 – to get to our destinations.

The Australian dollar was weakening against the British pound, probably due to the pandemic that was now worldwide. We were getting almost two to one, so we found that the trip was starting to be rather cheap for us. The best ‘bargain’ that we got was the fuel. We were filling the car up and at most places it was $1.50 per litre. That’s around 75 pence for us. Back in the UK, before we left it was £1.40 per litre. Huge difference!

We were nearing Esperance when we noticed that we needed to top up the fuel tank. We saw a gas station. $1.10 per litre! Happy days – even cheaper. We pulled up at the pump to wait for our turn and a local came up to us for a chat. He had noticed that the number plates on the car were registered to Queensland, so he knew we were not locals.

“G’day mate, how ya doin’. Far from home I see”

We told him where we were from, picking the vehicle up in Queensland, and doing the lap etc.

“Crikey, Poms in Oz. Defo a long ways from home. Don’t let these B******s rip you off with these fuel prices. Daylight robbery. Old mate round the corner has his for 99 cents. Get ya a**es off to there, he’ll be right”

And with that he smiled, took a swig of beer from his beer bottle that was encased in his stubby holder, and waved us in the right direction.

99 cents?! We were off! Thanking the man, we went to the garage in question, and sure enough it was 99 cents. We filled the car and both of the jerry cans we had, and carried on towards Esperance.

When we arrived, the caravan park that we wanted to stay in was full. So was the next one.

We looked on the map in the direction of where we wanted to be heading and found a free camping spot, just 90k further on. We drove around the town and stopped for a coffee in a layby so that we could get out and stretch our legs on the beautiful white sand that graced the beach in Esperance. We had a stroll around a few shops, then hopped back into the car to find the next place that we would be staying at.

As we drove down the long and dusty road, we saw Emu running in the fields at the side of us. Then suddenly, as if from nowhere a couple of them streaked across the road in front of us. We slowed down to let these huge birds do their thing. I managed to grab a photo. Emu are huge. They are the second largest bird in the world, coming in at 2 metres tall. They can run up to speeds of 48kph – but they can’t outrun a kangaroo which can reach speeds of 70kph! (John Williamson wrote a song called ‘Old man emu’ and it was on our playlist) I came to the conclusion that this country is full of huge weird looking animals, and small deadly ones. Lots of deadly ones. When Australia was created, I’m sure God said “I am going to give you paradise, but we have to balance the scales, so I’m also going to fill your land with some of the deadliest and oddest creatures on earth..” and, lo, Australia was born.

I pulled Wikicamps up on my phone to look for the directions to Membinup beach. That was a place that we fancied staying. From the photos it had clear turquoise waters, white sand and the best part was – it was free! Now, I’m not the best map reader by far, and google maps was not helping at all. It kept telling us to turn left, when there were no left turns. After a while we came across a campsite called Duke of Orleans Caravan Park. I suggested that we book in there for the night, and the next day we could leave the caravan in situ and search for Membinup. The site was great, really spacious, and at a very reasonable cost too.

Where we pitched up, we were surrounded by gum trees.

One in particular caught my eye. It looked like a pair of long legs wearing underwear. Almost as if a huge wooden giant had been buried head first in the ground and all you could see were legs.

We settled into the campsite, put our ‘fire pit’ out that we had fashioned from the steel rim we had found on the side of the road, and collected some logs from the log pile.

Sitting in front of the fire with a bottle of Great Northern Super Crisp each, we studied the map and worked out where we would need to go to get to Wharton the following day.

We woke early and set off. We turned the sat nav on for help, and this time it came up trumps. The road we needed was actually there – not just a bush as before. As we drove down the road (well I say road…it was actually sand where vehicles had been before and worn it away) we noticed that it was getting narrower and narrower. There were no places to turn around if we met another vehicle coming the other way. In fact the scrub land was scraping on each side of the 4wd. After 10 minutes we both agreed that it was a good idea to leave the caravan, as it would definitely have got wedged in with nowhere to go. We had no option, though, but to carry on and go forward until we either reached the beach, or found a way to turn around. 30 more minutes passed, and we were driving through thick bush. Then an opening appeared before us. PHEW! But… as we approached the opening, we saw that there was a drop that we would need to navigate in order to turn around. From our driving position it was difficult to see properly, so I pushed my door hard to try an open it as I was going to get out and look. However, as I opened my door, I spotted something long and brownish in colour slithering through the bush. I immediately closed my door. No way jose was I going to leave the safety of the car! I opened the sunroof and stood up through it to see two things. Firstly the long brown thing was a snake of about 8 foot in length, and secondly, the drop in front of us was about 3 feet. We gingerly moved the car forward and at one point the wheels on my side left the ground. I may have squealed at this point. Haha. Well, to cut a long story short, we managed the drop, turned around and made it back to the campsite – without even a glimpse of the beach. The car looked a little worse for its journey, but nothing that a good polish couldn’t fix.

As we neared Duke of Orleans, we saw a sign for Wharton beach, so thought we would go there as it was on a route with tarmac. As we pulled up the sight was truly breath-taking. Turquoise water that glinted as though it was studded with diamonds, sand as white as snow with foamy white waves lapping the beach. Julia and Angus Stone came out of our speakers singing ‘big jet plane’ as we drove onto the beach.

We set ourselves up for a day in the sun.

The sand was like something I had never felt before. As you walked on it – it squeaked. It was so fine, just like the sand in an egg timer. Truly beautiful.

We spent 4 nights at this campsite and visited Wharton every day. We couldn’t get enough of this amazing place. One day we went to the beach behind the caravan park, it was lovely but there was a lot of seaweed there – and the waters were patrolled by a family of sting rays. They were friendly enough, they came right to the waters edge to check us out, but we kept our distance.

The reason that we were only in this slice of paradise for 4 nights was that the internal borders – or counties – within Western Australia were closing, as the Covid pandemic was forcing a world-wide lockdown, and this caravan park, although lovely, was 90km from the nearest town. So we decided to travel to Albany, as it was coastal and a larger town – just in case we needed provisions etc, as no one knew how long the lockdown would be for. It took a few hours to get there, and we hadn’t booked anything ahead. We found a lovely place called Emu Beach. As we were now classed as ‘essential travellers with no fixed abode’ we were able to stay here. We had to show our British passports and driving licences to prove that we were not native to the country. (our British accents weren’t enough, haha) It was a huge site, with about 100 pitches. The owners had cleared everyone off who had homes to go back to, and we were there with about 6 other people who were also travelling like us.

The following day, all of the internal borders in WA closed – so yet again, we had just made it in time!

The owners told us that they had been informed that we should all ‘social distance’ and that this would possibly be in effect for 4 – 6 weeks.

So, hello, Albany. Our new home for a month. Happy days.

I’ll tell you about this wonderful place in my next episode.

>> See Part 5: From UK to Oz part 5 >>See Part 7: From UK to Oz: Dinkum

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Ms C. the Brit in Oz

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