Long Drive

Wednesday, 8 September

Yesterday evening was very wet and cold and shortly after we retired, it also became a tad windy – we stayed awake for some time being rocked and listening to the awning creak! The morning really brought home that there is no land between Albany and Antarctica. We didn’t really waste time packing up – there were some very black and ominous clouds building up to the west.

The first part of the road to Ravensthorpe was through eucalyptus plantations as far as the eye could see in both directions. As we neared Ravensthorpe, the plantations gave way to canola and grain farms. One good thing about the road – a wide ribbon of natural bush has been left on both sides, virtually all the way from Albany to Esperance. Needless to say, we had many, many stops to look at flowers. The bush is simply a mass of colour, from the hundreds of different varieties of wattles, the gums with their white or red flower, the deep rose colour of the coneflowers, lots of white and blue flowers, and numerous bushes of orange pea type flowers.

We had decided to overnight at Ravensthorpe, 300 kms east of Albany, but when we arrived at the caravan park Cat immediately said “No,” Pauline immediately said “No” and Leslie said “Mmm, perhaps it would be better if ….” A quick democratic vote and we were on the road again for the 200 km drive to Esperance!!!

We are at the Esperance Seafront Caravan Park, right on the beach, of course. This is a large park, sites either have slabs or shade cloth pads and are plenty big enough. We decided on a concrete slab, in view of the weather forecast, and then discovered that it was very tight to reverse into. Hopefully the people in the permanent cabin opposite wont notice the crack in their plastic pot plant for a couple of weeks.