Sunday, January 4th

Beaches and Bays

About thirty metres outside my hotel was Esperance Bay and the ocean. The view was somewhat spoiled, though, by the local port and two large, rusty old tankers parked smack in the middle of the bay. Perhaps that had been the reason for constructing the ring road to prettier beaches.

Esperance itself was rather busy this Sunday morning. There were cars hurrying about everywhere. The town centre along a street two blocks back from the ocean front suffered particularly. It was a rather confused arrangement with ugly modern concrete buildings and large pine trees. A fair of some kind was going on in the park of the visitor centre.

On the way out of town the road towards Cape Le Grand and Cape Arid National Parks forked off. The brochure in the hotel room had praised both of them as something akin of ‘awesome.’ Mostly, the praise was for the beaches, with some for the vegetation added for good measure. Only Cape Le Grand was reachable by regular car, though, and I opted against it on grounds of there likely being more beaches along my back west.

Instead, I turned onto the South Coast Highway. At least here out west, most main highways had names besides their mundane numbers. A nice touch and much better for the prose of a travelogue.

Distances kept remaining on the insane side. The next town, Ravensthorpe, was reported to be 189 kilometres away, the better part of two hours of driving. But somehow this morning I had found my driving spirit and wasn’t bothered at all. I turned the music up way too loud and happily kept rolling on.

The land remained mostly grassland, possibly farm fields with forests in between. It kept iterating between flat and hilly. The latter bits even had rivers with actual water in them, quite the change from the dried out riverbeds of the last days. The roadside was decorated with trees sporting brightly yellow blossoms. I tried to stop and take pictures for later identification, but on fast roads these stunts hardly ever work.

About halfway to Ravensthorpe the village of Munglinup was promised for in five kilometres. Shortly thereafter yet another sign pointed to Munglinup Beach, 25 km away. The road turning off looked suspiciously sealed, which was confirmed by the map. I quickly turned around and off.

It was sealed, indeed, but only one lane. On each side there was another lane of gravel road to make meeting oncoming cars easier. This had been arranged cunningly in such a way that it looked as if the sealed lane was the one of the opposing traffic even though both gravel lanes had the same width. Through this, drivers were subconsciously guided towards the gravel lane if a car did appear.

Eventually another turn off. The new road ran along a river valley for a while before zigzagging down to a caravan park. I parked the car, walked through the dunes and, no more than twenty metres later, out onto a brilliantly white beach continuing for ever in either direction. The sea was very shallow towards the beach, the waves broke far out and gently rolled the last fifty or so metres through the most azure of waters.

Even though the caravan park was quite busy—it looked as if it was fully used—there were maybe five people on the beach itself. I took off my shoes, folded up my pants, and waded in. Not too far, though. My overly imaginative mind turned everything floating in the water into Terrifying Jellyfish (the improved name for the species introduced by a friend after she got stung by one of them in France).

I started walking along the waterline, sometimes in the water, sometimes, when sinking too far, along the almost dried up sand. I kept going just for one more corner before putting my foot down (literally) and turning back. You have to on a beach that keeps going on for dozens if not hundreds of kilometres.

I left the beach with wet pants (from the water, silly; my mind isn’t that imaginative), sandy feet, and now totally getting all the fuss the Australians made about their beaches. This, indeed, was fabulous. And by all accounts was this an unreasonably busy beach.

After dragging too much sand into the car I backtracked my steps to the main highway. Munglinup village wasn’t quite as good as its beach, in fact it hid away to the left of the road. A sign pointed to Munglinup Bin which turned out to be a grain storage facility, not the local dump.

Soon—or perhaps after quite a while, who can say on these endless roads—I entered into a curious miniature forest. The ‘trees’ were about one-and-a-half metres tall but as dense and impenetrable as a real, scary forest. They were deciduous but with dark green, almost red leafs. And animal warning sign suggested a danger from Mallee Fowl, whatever that might be. The picture looked suspiciously like the road runner. Or maybe an emu.

The miniature forest went on forever. Suddenly the land became properly hilly, almost mountainous and the trees became proper for a while. Past the ‘mountain rage’ followed grassland and, finally, Ravensthorpe.

The first impression was that the size of the name in the map was once again seriously overselling reality. There was a road intersection, a high school, a sports ground, and a petrol station. I decided to stop and get some coffee from the latter. They only had a forlorn looking machine. The Flat White it produced exclusively consisted of hot, sweet milk and was quite disgusting.

But since I had paid four dollars for it, I was set on drinking every last drop. Doing so, I wandered around town, had a look at the war memorial and the caravan park. The temperature was hovering just below thirty, the sun was out and, apart from the rare car, it was brilliantly calm and quite.

The intersection led towards Hopetoun, fifty kilometres away by the ocean but once again a dead end, at least as far as regular cars were concerned. Instead I set off along the South Coast Highway once more and discovered that there was more to Ravensthorpe. What had looked like the road running up the hill and out of town was, in fact, more town. There was a hardware store and a restaurant. There even was the Palace Motor Hotel in a real two-storey hotel building complete with all-around balcony on the upper floor.

Up top, the grassland continued. A marker announced ‘J 105.’ J was Jerramungup, the next town and 105 was the number of kilometres left. These little markers are repeated every five or ten kilometres along the highways as an ingenious and cheap reminder. The next town is always abbreviated with one or two letters allowing the signs to remain rather small. Still much more useful then the mileposts common elsewhere, even though they provide for a quick math lesson while driving.

Grassland turned back into miniature forest or real forest or farm land. Nothing really noteworthy happened. The road just wound along and so did I. It is surprising how quickly one accepts more than one hundred kilometres as the regular distance between towns even though this sort of thing tends to glorify small villages beyond reason.

Jerramungup, for instance, wasn’t anything to write home about. It did have a little rest stop, though, complete with information store and lavatory. Another driver standing by his vehicle gestured at me angrily when I turned into the parking lot. I took a while to realize that in fact he didn’t but rather swatted away flies.

As did I soon during my short toilette break.

Off again and deep in far driving trance, I noticed a sign for Bremer Bay pointing to the left. Wait a second. That was where I was headed. I quickly consulted the map and indeed there seemed to be short cut and it seemed to be sealed, too. Once more I turned around and then off, through Gairdner, consisting of a school and a bin.

Bremer Bay was a mere sixty kilometres away. About ten kilometres out of town white sand patches started to interrupt the forests in the far distance. At the entrance of town was a kangaroo warning sign. Surely, that must have been a joke.

Apparently not quite ready to end the driving yet, I accidentally shot past the entrance to my chosen hotel and decided to just keep going. The road ended at main beach. But there wasn’t a parking lot, only a sign saying ‘Beach Access.’ And so I simply drove onto the large, flat and disturbingly white beach.

Bremer Bay was, well, a bay. Protected by Hood Point and Point Henry, the water was shallow and quiet. According to the guide book, whales were nesting here in winter (or however that is called for whales). It still left something to be desired compared to Munglinup Beach or even last night’s Observation Point Beach. Since I didn’t have a 4x4, I couldn’t even enjoy driving around very much, fearing to get stuck and almost did.

Finally having done enough driving, I returned to the hotel entrance and ended the day over fish and chips and beer.