Jerramungup, a toddlin’ town; getting lucky at Lucky Bay; there’s a tavern in the town (of Condingup); Cindy Poole, heart of a glass artist; I say Esp-eh-rance, you say “Esprintz”; three firsts in one day; reviews and summation
This trip was all about Esperance, a destination that boasts some of WA’s – or even Australia’s – best beaches. Albany, Denmark, Augusta and Yallingup were lovely to revisit, but we’d been there before.
A surprising number of Perth residents I spoke to had never made it to Esperance; others had done so only recently for the first time – and mainly because of Covid-19 travel restrictions bringing an end to international travel. Until a year ago, it had been more convenient and possibly less expensive to take the family to Bali, the seventh state of Australia.
Driving from Perth to Esperance is quite a commitment: first, you’ve got to get to Albany (four to five hours). From there, it’s another somewhat tedious five hours east.
For the second day in a row, I took the first two-hour stint behind the wheel. The absence of traffic can make a driver complacent, but the sad sighting of several kangaroo corpses on the roadside served to keep me on my toes.
The Merry Metropolis of Jerramungup
What should have been just 160km to the tiny town of Jerramungup took a full two hours thanks to a roadworks detour on the Great Southern Road. At Jerramungup – at whose caravan park we’d be stopping overnight on the way back west – we found a sweet café and a Supa IGA supermarket.
There, a friendly staff member rummaged through a box of Chinese-made wizardry to find us a perfectly serviceable $7 charger for my iPhone 11. (In the frenzied flight from pestilential Perth and Peel, I’d left my own behind. And the shop over the road from the IGA had wanted closer to $30. Imagine Roy’s unabated joy!)
But he was sad that we wouldn’t be here on 27 March for the hotly awaited Dancing in the Dirt shindig.
We Get Lucky at Le Grand National Park
With only a brief window of good weather before the wind was forecast to change, I exerted my persuasive skills to get Roy up and out of bed before his customary 9am, and he kindly obliged.
It’s less than an hour from Esperance east along Fisheries Road, and from there south to Le Grand National Park and Lucky Bay. (Entry into the park is $15 per car – whether you come by road or from the beach.)
What luck that we left when we did: we got there just in time for the money shot – pristinely pellucid water under a brilliant blue sky and the finest, whitest, powderiest sand I’ve ever seen. It’s also de rigeur to drive your 4×4 on to the firm, level beach; in fact, at the certain times it’s possible to get there following the beach all the way from Esperance.
I can’t remember when last my husband and I walked together on a beach. It was magnificent. All that was missing were the kangaroos that Lucky Bay is famous for – they probably come down on to the sand only later in the day.
Until recently, it wasn’t necessary to book a place at the Le Grand National Park campsite, but now it’s a requirement – and I heard a couple of days ago that the camping grounds are booked up for the next two years!
Condingup Tavern
Roy had heard there was a good tavern northeast of Lucky Bay, in the tiny town of Condingup*. Condingup Tavern and General Store has an interesting history – one that I read out loud from the website to my driver, so that by the time we got there, I felt like old friends with handsome Abe Davey behind the bar, not to mention the whole Davey family.
Though he’d sought it out and brought us here, Roy is not a tavern type. While he made love to his macchiato (rather than a tonic and gin), it was I, the barfly, who ordered a glass of pale ale to wash down a sinfully good slab of pecan caramel pie. Abe had recommended the nearby Duke of Orleans bay and beach – but we didn’t feel like doing another 40km each way.
(*The name Condingup is said to come from the Aboriginal word for a wild flower called something like kunjin – and the suffix -up means “place of”.)
Run for the Hills – the Great Ocean Drive
My Oūra ring having scored me a heady 91 and 89 on Readiness and Sleep respectively, it behooved me to pull on some running shoes, plug in a Paul Chek podcast (this exact one) and head for the hills – literally.
(* For activity-tracking it’s not the greatest; but for sleep-tracking, this is the one ring to rule them all. Find out more here.)
Our accommodation at Driftwood Apartments is at 69 The Esplanade; turning right at the gate takes you to the R358 and the Great Ocean Drive. It’s an initially steepish route that soon lets you join a safe and pleasant coastal path through the dunes. It’s hard to find the superlatives to describe this series of magnificent beaches.
I returned to find a well-rested and therefore genial Roy, cells fully reconstituted after his requisite nine to ten hours of beauty sleep and now raring to take the wheel. Resigned to the crappy weather that had settled in, I was grateful for the short window of sunshine that accompanied us on the 40km Great Ocean Drive.
Heading along Twilight Beach Road, the scenic drive features Rotary Lookout, with a close to 360-degree panorama of sea and inland lakes; other highlights include West Beach, Observatory Point and the exquisite Twilight Beach – voted best Australian beach in 2006. Well, it’s just as good now as it was then, and my photos don’t do it justice.
Just opposite Salmon Beach is Australia’s first wind-farm, which you can visit if you’re so inclined. It’s part of the Great Ocean Drive; whether it’s an attraction is moot.
Visiting Cindy Poole’s Gallery & Studio at 6 Longbottom Road, just off Pink Lake Road, was a genuine highlight. The glass artist herself was initially out, but arrived soon after beautiful young Grace – who would have been at school in Perth had it not been for the Covid-19 lockdown – had rustled us up a couple of coffees and sold me a pair of gorgeous dangly earrings.
Recycled from a Bombay Sapphire bottle (already off to a good start), each of the earrings also incorporates a few grains of sand from Lucky Bay. Irresistible!
Cindy is an inspired and inspirational artist whose Recycled Project focuses on recycling glass bottles into objects of use and beauty. According to her website, she is inspired by the natural surroundings of the Esperance region. Her diverse body of work includes “public artwork, architectural, decorative, conceptual and wearable art pieces”.
You say Esprintz, I say Es-peh-rhance
Actually, I don’t. I quickly learnt to say Esprintz – from a sense of self-preservation and a desire not to offend. Like people all over the world, and quite rightly so, Aussies despise foreigners mispronouncing their place names – and that includes towns with British names. So, Exmouth is “Ex-mouth” and not “Exmuth”. Albany is “Al-binny” and not “All-binny”.
The history of Esperance Bay dates back to 1792, when two French vessels on a rescue expedition, L’Espérance (Hope) and Le Recherche (Research), found themselves dangerously surrounded by the high seas and rocks off this coast. According to information at the excellent Esperance Museum, one seaman Le Grand was up on the mast of L’Espérance, from where he guided the vessel to safety. Here’s an instance where it probably wasn’t better to travel in hope than to arrive*.
*Quote: “… to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive…” Robert Louis Stevenson
The first settlers were the Dempster brothers and their families, who in 1863 drove livestock from Northam to Esperance and took up the first land-holding of 100,000 acres.
In 1895, the discovery of gold in Dundas, Coolgardie and Kalgoordie sparked a tremendous transformation of Esperance. This sleepy settlement became a gateway to the Goldfields, within a year or two boasting four hotels, two newspapers and a brewery – not to mention this Bijou Theatre (below, 1896). Bijou (small) as it is, it was for well into the 1960s the centre of the annual Esperance agricultural show, as some fascinating footage at Esperance Museum depicts. We sat and watched this vintage video material for nearly an hour.
Another important influence on the town’s fortunes was American investment in agriculture here, starting in the 1960s. Before that, the salinity of the soil had been blamed for poor results. (I hate to think what those new agricultural techniques involved. Perhaps fortunately, I’m unlikely ever to find out.)
After such a day of sightseeing and museum-going, Roy’s energies were palpably waning. Only this will explain how I succeeded in luring him into the bar of the Pier Hotel – one of the town’s oldest establishments. Demolished and rebuilt several times over its more than a century of existence, its current incarnation is bland to say the least. The kindest that can be said of the soul-less bar is that it’s huge and clean. I had a midi of the yummy Yak Ale; he ordered the same Pirate Life Pale Ale I’d enjoyed at Condingup the day before. Sadly and strangely, the bar stocked nothing from the nearby Lucky Bay Brewery, which we were just too late to visit.
Review: Driftwood Apartments, 69 Esplanade, Esperance
The two-storey units cost slightly more than the single-level ones, but are worth it. Downstairs are two bedrooms – each with a queen bed and a single; a bathroom with a big spa bath, a shower and a washer-drier; plus a separate loo with a wash-basin. Upstairs is an open-plan kitchen, dining area and lounge, with sliding doors on to a balcony with seating, a barbecue and an estate agent’s view of Esperance Bay. There, Roy charred a sizzle of snags for us one night.
Incidentally, that rounded off three firsts in one day – things we hadn’t done together for a very long time: walking on the beach, sharing a bubble bath, and braai-ing together.
Driftwood Apartments is literally a couple of minutes by foot from the delightful seafront park and a charming little marina; and less than a ten-minute walk from the Pier Hotel and the town centre.
The old Tea Rooms are now what may be the best restaurant in town – Taylor St Quarters.
Review: Taylor St Quarters, 1 Taylor Street
For dinner one night, we crossed the Esplanade and walked past the Yacht Club to find this excellent establishment – I’d spotted it during my walks. A lovely place in great surroundings, it served up an unexpectedly good meal. For a carb-limiting couple like us, this was a rare breakout feast: piping hot polenta chips with aioli ($12), followed by local occy on rosti ($22) for me, and for Roy, pressed, seared and slow-cooked lamb shoulder ($36) accompanied by a heap of barley cooked with sultanas, flaked almonds and more. All quite delicious, as was our bottle of Wills Domain Cab Merlot Mystic Spring ($46). Nice service, too, by a friendly, multinational staff.
Review: Seasons Restaurant, 44-66 The Esplanade, Esperance
Just next to the Pier Hotel, Seasons forms part of the Hospitality Esperance hotel. It was grilled barramundi ($36) for Roy, and a small but immaculately crispy pork belly ($35) for me; his with loads of veggies, mine with nice broccolini but with a daunting pile of boiled potatoes that emphasised the petiteness of the pork. A half-bottle of aggressively new world Chardonnay ($18) between us turned out to be enough: even diluted with ice, this was a drop that punched above its weight. Good food, average atmosphere, and a reasonable experience overall.
Summing up
My friend Anna had described Esperance as a great place to go if you love beaches – and I saw that she was right. The beaches are out of this world. I wish we’d been blessed with better beach weather, but I’m delighted to have visited the area anyway. Will we be back soon? Probably not – or, not before we have explored a lot more of what wonderful WA has to offer.
Coming up next, watch out for Part 3 of this epic refugee saga as we revisit the characterful Southwestern towns of Denmark, August and Yallingup.
