2015/11 Australia trip - Cape Arid |
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We drove for an hour or so into Esperance, our last substantial place before hitting the Nullarbor again. It was sunny and nice and hot. Unfortunately, we had to spend most of the day on chores and maintenance. We found the visitor’s centre and then a launderette and the post office. Good news was that Cape Arid was only partly burned and there was a campground still open. We filled up with diesel and water and food and visited the bank: our cheque had cleared on schedule and we had money again! There was a Dome Café here too, so that gave us Internet.
Esperance has a pretty setting with many conical granite islands out in the bay. It seems to have avoided the tackiness of many seaside resorts and has a waterfront of parks, museums, and sculptures. This is a model of Skylab, which came down in 1979 strewing 25 tons of partly cooked bits in a swath from Esperance to Balladonia. The Shire of Esperance fined NASA $400 for littering.
Eventually we were off the nearby Cape Le Grand, justly famous for its granite peaks and gorgeous bays. Unfortunately, this was a weekend and we were close to town, so the first campground was already full, with a few spaces left in the other. As we got closer we could see that it was being rebuilt, and the only camping space was an already full parking lot, with other vehicles circulating waiting for a miracle. Even if we somehow got in, it wouldn’t be a great experience; time to replan!
There was just enough light left for us to drive out of the park and blast 120K east to Cape Arid, where we’d planned to be on Sunday night. We hoped this would be far enough away to deter the
weekend campers. The road was gravel, another deterrent; though it was extremely good gravel and we were driving at 100K with no other traffic to be seen.
The park showed signs of serious fire, with the east side of the park road blackened for as far as we could see. We arrived at the Thomas River campground just before dark. Only one of the 18 campsites was occupied. We could hear the surf booming just below us but we had no daylight to go and explore. The only thing we were certain of was that we were camping in a forest of banksia shrubs, some around 20 feet high.
Saturday October 31st
On a cloudy morning, we set off to explore the beach and soon discovered that we couldn’t do that without wading across the Thomas River, which sprawled its way across the sands. We decided to walk up the riverbank instead. There was quite a flow coming down which made us wonder why D’Entrecasteaux chose to give the nearby cape the name “Arid”. There are plenty of other dry capes that don’t have rivers close by.
There were oyster catchers and plovers, even a bevy of black swans, careful to keep their distance as we walked upriver. Eventually we squished and turned back when the bank became a 
mudflat. On our way back we found another campground close to the river, this one run by the county, and even emptier than ours.
We drove south to the Tagon Point area, and found a trail that took us across a granite landscape to Dolphin Cove and then to Little Tagon Bay, both beaches with white sands and shimmering blue water and flowering shrubs, exquisite places to us but probably just beaches to the locals. Even the waves were beautiful; they really were this unusual shade of green. We had a view across the bay to Cape Arid the park’s namesake.
(Big) Tagon Bay was a bit far to walk so we drove the track over the dunes to the beach for lunch. We didn’t bother deflating the tyres like you are supposed to; we’d shovel our way out if we had to. The sand was difficult to walk through but the Troopie did just fine.
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Cape Arid (6.34) |
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The clouds had thinned and we had blue sky for some more walking. We drove to the Len Otte nature trail. We enjoyed the walk and found a few new flowers, but the signage on the nature trail was missing and we somehow managed to miss the advertised overlook. We hadn’t seen anyone for hours so were surprised to come nose to nose with this kangaroo.
We had enough daylight left to write our postcards and discover that some of them had preprinted messages, so we had to cross out the bits that didn’t apply!
Sunday November 1st
We’d been fascinated by these giant ants that shared our campsite. Even when confronted by a human finger they wouldn’t back down but would strike a defensive pose while other ants came running. We didn’t test their bite.