Rick and Rae's Travels: Wed, 6th to Sun, 10th April

We left Esperance early and headed 50kms to Cape Le Grand which has a small camping area in a National Park. On the way we ticked over 6,000kms of our trip. It was lucky that we arrived early (9:30am) as we had a choice of three secluded sites. There are only 15 sites altogether and it is a case of 'first in, best dressed'. After walking the entire area we decided that site one was the best and set ourselves up. It was closest to the beach and very sheltered. The facilities in the camp are a great ... solar showers, flushing toilets, camp kitchen complete with BBQs and 4 huge gas burners and sinks ... very civilised! All this cost $6 each per night. The only catch is that you can only stay for a max of 28 days. We were greeted by a very large lizard who wandered around our site as though he owned it!

The day warmed up beautifully to around 36 degrees and stayed calm. Rick even went swimming twice during the day as the water was warm and clean. The sand is so white that when the sun shines the water is a beautiful aqua colour. You can actually drive almost all the way back to Esperance along the beach, providing you take care of what the tide is doing.

On Thursday we woke to a rather gloomy day so we decided to drive to another camping area not far away called Lucky Bay just to have a look. As we drove out of our site there was a German couple trying to hitch a ride back into Esperance. We had seen the couple the day before on the beach. We picked them up and as we weren't going to Esperance, we drove them out to the turnoff. It seems they are hiking around the country and had spent the previous night sleeping rough on the beach. They said they arrived in Perth a month ago and have 3-4 months left in our country. After bidding them goodbye, we visited another beach called Hellfire and walked to it's smaller brother, Little Hellfire before the rain started. When the rain settled in, we headed back to camp and played games. Unfortunately, we had no mobile phone therefore no internet connection either.

Friday was cool again and blowing a gale with the odd shower of rain, so we did some more driving around and sight seeing. Saturday was still cool but a bit better weather. We drove to the Duke of Orleans Caravan Park, approximately 50kms away. We saw some more beautiful scenery and then stopped at a little place called Condingup. There is a tavern there, so we decided to have some lunch. The food was lovely and a young lady there explained that the tavern had been in her family since 1968.

Sunday was another cool and later on, windy day. We walked approximately 4kms return along the beach. We also climbed almost to the top of Mt Le Grand overlooking our camp area. Believe it or not Johnno, 'The Wrecker' actually drove a few kilometres along the beach.