Esperance is about 4hrs South of Kalgoorlie, 7.5hrs East of Perth. We were planning to stay there for about 3 nights and it was to be the jump off point to a half day cruise, a hike up Frenchman peak and visits to the musem, bird park and arboretum.
We stayed at the very unpublicised (that is, not on booking.com or google maps at the time) "The Rest" at the west end of Esperance. A little woodland cottage, two bed, one bathroom, rustic with barely any mobile signal. Ideal for a bit of off grid relaxation, and located at the end of an unmarked gravel driveway. The porch offers some mildly obscured views of the Pink Lake (that isn't pink), plus there were some confusing (as to whether they were public or not) walk trails nearby too.
The natural thing to do when arriving in Esperance is to drive west and along the South coast on the Great Ocean Road. This drive takes you along the coast passing a number of beaches and lookouts and kind of ending at the Rotary Lookout.
First stop is was 11 Mile Beach. It was incredibly windy, making it a hat free zone.
The second beach was 10 Mile Lagoon, followed by a quick detour to the wind farm (underwhelming after visiting the Merredin wind farm), and then the observatory lookout, with fantastic views but no observatory.
We did skip the next few beaches (9 mile, 8 mile etc...) and jumped straight to the end at the rotary lookout. A concrete viewing platform with some information boards but actually the least impressive of the Great Ocean Drive views.
We had a quick dinner at the Loose Goose. A strange affair, where all dishes cost exactly $38 with mandatory garlic and herb bread, but easily not worth $38.
Our first night at The Rest was for the most part, without water, but it gave us a chance to call out the owners to say hello! We only suffered two evenings without water - how rustic!
A couple of days later we decided to visit the bird park, back on the Coolgardie-Esperance Highway. It's a bit of an odd spot, but pleasantly after a series of disappointing bird parks in this state, it was a pleasant surprise. Entry fee also included a bit of food to feed the farm animals with. They loved it, we loved it too.
On the other side of the highway is the Helms Arboretum. It's a self drive affair of lots and lots of trees, with information posts as you pass each tree species. It's free to enter and its quite a pleasant way to spend 30 mins, plus a great spot for photographing leading lines.
Esperance Museum wasn't open in the morning, but it was pretty impressive, filled with plenty of history plus a decent amount of information about SkyLab, the NASA satellite that came down in the area.
We returned to the rotary lookout, not for more rotary views, but actually because of the short walk down to Lover's Cove, and the much improved views... but I didn't take my camera and while the best camera is the one you have with you, the processing on mobile phones these days feels so cheap and over-processed.
The mobile phone photo...eww
