2015/11 Australia trip - Stokes |
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We headed into nearby Hopetoun to buy some postcards and get some change for paying for camping. Hopetoun’s tiny shopping area is just off the beach, with a few interesting buildings. We got our postcards, only to find later that some of them had preprinted greetings on the back: “great time in Hopetoun, wish you were here, just went on the …. “
We went in one of the cafes for coffee and were told that the scones were almost ready. I guess a watched scone never bakes, because we were there for a long time.
We set off east towards Esperance, though we only expected to get as far as Stokes national park. We’d had enough of the main roads and opted for a quite good gravel and 
sand road that hugged the coast, giving us access to a succession of beaches.
We stopped for lunch at Starvation Bay, a free camping spot, empty except for us. We don’t know the story behind the name but many ships were wrecked on this coast and 
surviving the shipwreck was only part of the problem; the survivors were hundreds of miles from anywhere and food and water.
The road was mostly straight, cutting through sand dunes and skirting lagoons, quite different from our last park so the plant life was different too, less lush. We were seeing big stands of banksia and stretches of red kangaroo paws.
Headnets were definitely necessary. We were being mobbed by flies. The attraction here was some moisture on my lens; that’s what happens to the unguarded eyeball!
While looking for flowers we found this blue tongue, all bright and shiny so we assumed it had just shed its old skin.
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Stokes blue tongue (0.25) |
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We had to return to the South Coast Highway to get to the main entrance to Stokes. We found the camping area and realized that things had changed since our last visit in 2006. Back then it was a brief overnight stop, and we hadn’t seen much. The camping host’s partner Tanya told us to pick a site and be sure to show up for happy hour at the kitchen.
We found a sunny spot on the hillside with a view over Stokes Inlet. When we’d been there in 2006 we’d camped a few feet from the water’s edge and watched a full moon rise 
over the perfectly still inlet and then watched as pelicans swam through the moon’s reflection. Not this time.
There was a new trail too, and this took us along the hillside above the inlet through a forest of banksias and these enormous zamias, a kind of cycad.
At happy hour we met some neighbours and the host. He’d recently returned from a trip to North America with cruises to Bahamas, Cabo, Alaska, and Nova Scotia. He’d also bought a motorhome while he was in Texas, had it shipped to Australia, and then professionally converted to Australian regulations. It all sounded very expensive to us but he reckoned that he’d saved $70K in the process.
He also told us that a fire had gone through the park in late 2006 just after our last visit and wiped out the campground. The new one, much larger, had been built on the hillside, and the old one was now a day use area.
Friday October 30th
On our way out, we drove to the day use area and sure enough it was where we’d camped. Our guess was that the water was at least a foot higher, but don’t know if it was due to tide or rainfall.
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