Esperance

Esperance is a town on the south coast of Western Australia. Around the town and to the western side, is the Bay of Islands and to the east is Cape Le Grande national park. Many people told us that they think this is the most beautiful part of Australia.

The town itself is really nothing to look at – in fact, I didn’t even take any pictures! But, it has everything you need – a few petrol stations, a supermarket and several other shops and restaurants. About a week before we were going, I started to call around caravan parks and campgrounds to find a place to stay – nearly everything was fully booked! In fact, the campgrounds in Cape le Grande were all booked out for several months. We finally found a spot at the 5th caravan park we called.

Cape Le Grande National Park

We decided to take the 4WD beach drive to the national park instead of going the long way around on the paved road. It was a beautiful day, and a great drive down a hard, compact beach.

We didn’t really need to take the tires down, but we did it anyway to make the drive a bit easier. Our son is learning a lot about 4 wheel driving.

Hellfire Bay

Not sure why this bay has such a bad name, but it was our favourite beach in Cape Le Grande national park – it was sooo beautiful!

Lucky Bay

Lucky Bay is the more famous, and most talked-about bay in Cape Le Grande. You can drive right along the beach and there is a campground on the western end.

We drove along to a fairly empty space and spent a couple of hours enjoying the view.

Rosslyn Bay

After Lucky Bay, we decided to continue along and do another beach 4WD down Rosslyn Bay. This was a bit harder – much deeper sand and not many people around. (It is always a bit scary driving down deep sand on a beach without many people to help you because if you get stuck you have to ensure you get un-stuck before the tide comes back up!)

Bay of Islands

The next day, we headed to the western side of Esperance and the Bay of Islands. Here, the landscape is quite different to Cape Le Grande – there are tons of islands, cliffs, and the sea is rougher in the more unprotected areas.

Wind Farm

On top of the hill, there was a wind farm that we visited to learn a bit more about how wind energy works. This was one of the first and largest wind farms in WA.

Twilight Beach

Our final stop on the western side was Twilight beach – a popular beach near town. This beach had two sides – one in a protected bay and the another on the other side which had a slight bit more wave action. This was a beautiful beach with huge boulders that the kids enjoyed playing on.

Stonehenge

We went out to Stonehenge – a full-size replica of what Stonehenge would have looked liked 5,000 years ago. The area around Esperance has a few pink granite quarries. A tourist operation in Margaret River initially ordered all the stones to be cut at the quarry to have a full sized Stonehenge in Margaret River. Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt during the global financial crisis. So, a local farmer in Esperance bought the stones and erected the full-size Stonehenge replica on his farm. He also aligned it with sun (as the real Stonehenge is) so that the sunrise is aligned with the keystone and heel stone on the winter and summer solstices.

I wasn’t sure about this attraction before we went, but actually, it was really cool to see this replica. Apparently, it is the only full-sized replica in the world!