Le Grand Beach – 18 March to 6 April 2010

To move to Le Grand Beach we asked the Camp Hosts to reserve us a site when someone moved on. We didn't want to lose our site at Lucky Bay waiting for one that didn't materialize at Cape Le Grand.
We got a very good site tucked into the tea tree and sheltered by the sand hills from the wind. Unfortunately that also sheltered us from the Telstra Next G signal from Esperance, so we mounted our aerial on the television antennae to make sure it was line of sight to Esperance across the bay. It poked over the sand hills like a little triffid.  Subsequently we bought an antennae mast which raised our aerial up high and then we had excellent reception.

We are 60 km from Esperance by road and 27 km by beach but John is not convinced that driving on the beach is a good idea. The locals usually have a beach car which is all rusted out from the salt.  John overcame his reluctance to drive on the beach, 27km vs 60km is a powerful incentive, plus it is a lot of fun. Some days it is like a superhighway. Sometimes there are nudists on the beach furiously pulling their towels up and down. It doesn't seem at all relaxing to us.

This national park is more luxurious than most having flush toilets, solar heated showers and a great camp kitchen all kept spotlessly clean by the camp hosts. There are only 14 sites, all individual and secluded from each other, so it is very quiet. 
The beach is great to swim on, the water is like glass it is so clear and the waves are just nice. We had a wonderful swim the first day we were here. Trish chose a spot where people were standing looking out to sea as we thought it safer. We were the only people in the water and once in the water we surprised to meet a pod of about 20 dolphins who had detoured from their path to investigate us and say “Hello”. They swam to within a meter of us and then having clearly checked us out, turned and swam away.  It was a magical experience.
Trish, up to her neck in water could only think ' I don't have my camera, people will never believe this'. Obviously all the people were dolphin watching, not John and Tricia watching.

We are enjoying our shopping trips into Esperance. We revisit Sammy the sea lion and have a coffee at the Coffee Cat as well as some other great cafes throughout Esperance. Our favorite is the Ocean View.
 
We visited the Mermaid fish leather factory in Esperance. This is unique and recycles fish skins into fish leather. Fish leather is soft, strong and very pretty. They make handbags, shoes and various other items to buy. 

We did the Great Ocean Drive. This takes you past beautiful beaches to the west of Esperance, each more spectacular than the last, although none better than our own beach. Twilight Beach is the most popular with the locals. We also went past the (not ) pink lake which is only episodically pink when the salt concentrations are right.

We drove to the Duke of Orleans Bay, and big and little Wharton Beach. Tricia was driving, so down on the rocks we went with some encouragement from John. We inspected the caravan park at the Duke of Orleans Bay ( clean) and walked out to Table Top Island as far as you can go.  
We also visited Cape Arid another beautiful National Park. It has quite different plants to Cape Le Grand. We had lunch on Yokinup beach and drove onto Tagan Beach. The NP camping site at Cape Arid has only hybrid toilets but it is clean and nicely sited. Bring your own water.

We walked up Frenchman’s Peak which has a spectacular view of the Park.    

We did a scramble round to the cove next to Le Grand Beach on the rocks. We forgot our bathing togs and as it was completely deserted we had a relaxing swim without.

We swim and walk each day either along deserted beaches or over paths between the various coves and beaches and we enjoy being the only people there most of the time.

 

We enjoyed a lovely beach holiday here then as Summer became Autumn (Fall ) it was time to pack up and move on.