IN fact, today we visited the most south-westerly point in the whole of Australia down at Cape Leeuwin - where the Indian ocean meets the southern ocean. Not that you can see where they meet. There isn't a big old line pointing it out or anything. Pretty much looks like more of the same windy ocean you see anywhere.
But whatever.
You can imagine that we are very much at the edge of the earth.
The good thing about being at this particular edge of the earth is that we're surrounded by the wine of the Margaret River region.
To get here - we've been travelling through the south-west of WA.
Coming off the Nullarbor, we headed straight to Esperance and out the Cape Arid National Park. It was quite seriously the best bush camping you can probably do in this country (big call) and we had a great time. There's a whole lot of pics from there in the post below.
Then we spent about 4 days in Esperance.
I have to admit that I had been looking forward to Esperance for a very long time.
It fit all my criteria for choosing a location - good sounding name (like schweppervesence), close to nice beaches and not like a mega city.
But Esperance should actually have the word 'Port' in front of it,because the refinery and the overcast weather we had, really spoilt the vision I had conjured up in my head.
That said - everything around Esperance was amazing, it was a a very good base for getting to Cape le Grande National Park (50kms away), a number of stunning beaches and some damn good bogan spotting.
Check out this little gem - Twilight Beach:
Once at Esperance we stayed at a caravan park about 3kms out of town. It is easter holidays, so this was our first sort of encounter with people who put hang about in tents.
People OUR age!!
Except, that the tent people clearly don't like to talk to the caravan people. There was also a good collection of people who play their music too loud and let their annoying children run about the place unattended.
Sound like i've become a 65 year old much?
Well it gets worse.
I've been drinking wine from a cask, Husband man has been buying slabs of beer cans and we've been walking around outside the van in ugg boots.
So not only have we aged 35 years, we're also assimilating with our bogan surrounds.
This is worrying.
In between all this weird behaviour, we've been seeing awesomeness in WA.
Let's start with Cape le Grande. Here we drove and walked around each of the bays...
Lucky Bay:
Thistle Beach:
And then we decided it was time to hike our sorry arses up Frenchman's Peak, which not suprisingly, was named by the French.
The tourist guides said that this spot provides commanding views of the Esperance region, in particular the dazzling beauty of Cape Le Grand National Park and the 110 islands of the Recherche Archipelago.
It stands at 262 metres above sea level.
And we climbed it in bare feet.
Not that we intended to climb it with bare feet, it's just that we'd gone to all the beaches in our thongs (flip flops).
I was also wearing a dress. Which made for interesting conversations on the way up the almost vertical cliff face with foreigners exlaiming 'where are your shoes?!' as though we were some kind of lunatic.
As though we hadn't noticed that we weren't wearing any shoes.
Thank you helpy smurfs.
We were at one with nature, okay.
We were all instinct and primitive.
Kinda like our friend Ben, who climbed Machu Pichu in South America in thongs cause he wanted to look cool. But now he has to wear compression stockings on plane trips, which is clearly the antithesis of looking good.
On top of having no shoes, I was also wearing a loose summer dress.
Obviously climbing mountains is not an expected part of one's day when island living!
Here's me schlepping it on an incline:
Yeah!
I do have to say that toes have awesome grippage.
As promised, the views from the top were spectacular and there is this kind of cave like hollow that is also a great look-out, even though a mere photograph will not do it justice...
And then we had to climb down, barefoot and me in a dress trying not to flash unsuspecting tourists.
I am pretty sure that on that particular day, we were more of an attraction and will be in more memories of the climb up that mountain for everyone that saw us. All those, special shoe wearing proper travellers were beside themselves.
Then we caught some sunset at le Grande beach, our first of western sunshine setting over the waters...
We left Esperance and headed west to Albany, a gorgeous little ex-whaling town.
We stayed at Middleton beach, which was perfect for watching young Kate Middleton get married to Prince William.
I visited Whale World and Husband man set about cathing us some dinner at a place called Salmon Holes. Name gives it away really:
It was intended as a fishing shirt never to be seen. But clearly it brings luck and dinner and therefore warrants a special guest appearance.
As we headed toward Margaret River - we entered some beautiful rainforest/ national park area.
We walked amongst the tree tops 40 metres high at Tree Top Walk in Valley of the Giants near Walpole and then Husband man climbed the 60 metre Gloucester tree. Nutter.
A little way down the road was an outdoor art gallery, where a bunch of folk have put up some installation art along a path in the national park.
Here's my favourite - an oversize feather floating in the space between the trees.
And now we find ourselves at the Margaret River - lording it up on a sunny Tuesday, wine tasting our way around the surrounds.
Husband man's workplace gave him the farewell gift of a night at a lovely retreat.
In protest, Van Morrison's electrics short fused the Hilux on the way into town. Another trip to the van doctor for us.
So I'll leave you with this pic of Husband man at Hamelin Bay - where the sting-rays come up to your feet for you to feed them.
Western Australia is, so far, sensational.
Reckon you could sell that Thistle Beach photo to postcard people for big money.
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