Lucky Bay

IWe spent the last four days at Lucky Bay in Cape Le Grand NP, east of Esperance. It's a spectacular part of the country. We swam in the cool blue water and had a couple of days of great weather, however, this part of the world is notorious for being windy. Lucky for us, Lucky Bay, named this by Flinders in 1802, is relatively sheltered and not only sheltered his ship the Investigator, but also our tent.

S enjoyed playing with the other camp site kids. Unfortunately for us most of the families we meet along the way are taking a year to do Australia rather than 3 months so we might not see them again.

Today is L's 4th birthday and we're now headed for Albany some 400km west, to meet Grandpa and Mary.

On to Esperance

I'm a bit annoyed as my last two posts have been corrupted and I can't open them and I don't feel like writing them again. If they happen to save properly I'll post them later.
We've been out of range for a few days crossing the Nullabor, staying at Fraser Range Sheep Station and today we've arrived in Esperance and are in Cape Le Grand National Park. Huge granite hills, coastal heath, squeaky fine white sand and aqua blue water. We'll stay here 3 or 4 nights. It's perfect.

Fishing

We came very close to packing up and leaving this morning but we're so glad we didn't. Peter and his family were going into Smoky Bay as people around camp had been coming back with buckets full of blue swimmer crabs so we decided to check it out too.
We found them down at the jetty. S was pretty excited to be going fishing and Peter's kids showed him how you pull up the pots and check them for crabs every 5 mins or so. S was so excited when he pulled up a pot and found one in it. There were others also fishing and crabbing and they showed us what they'd caught but the wind was blowing a gale and it looked like rain so we headed back in.
Back at Haslam in the afternoon the wind had picked up even more but Peter was still keen to try the Haslam jetty so S and I went with him. S pulled in 2 more blue swimmers but there were also a lot of small rock crabs that got thrown back. By the end of the afternoon we had 3 King George Whitings and the 2 crabs.

Another family with 3 girls drove in this arvo and we had a nice time just standing around talking while the kids all played.
It's funny that it's taken this long to connect with other travellers, I think it's because of the kind of places we've been staying. This place is so budget that you get a wide range of people, in particular those who live on the road. Some of them don't seem to have much but they seem very happy and stress free. Others, like us, are just taking some time off to see Australia.

I bought some Smoky Bay oysters for dinner from an oyster shed and as I've never shucked an oyster before I found Trevor, an old guy in a few caravans over, and he was happy to show me how.

A little bit of history

In 1802-1803 Matthew Flinders, an English ships captain, was given the task to circumnavigate Australia and map it's coastline. He did this with remarkable accuracy, I've no idea how without a GPS, but somehow with trigonometry and primitive ships instruments he did. On board the Investigator they sailed in and out of bays and coves, around points, naming them as he went, usually after a member of his crew or a favourite place in Lancashire, where he grew up. It has also been said that Australia is now called that rather that Terra Autralis or Van Demons Land because of the frequency that Flinders referred to it by that name.

And so, Coffin Bay was named after Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, not to my disappointment, after a wrecked ship carrying coffins.
We were planning to spend a couple of nights in the NP at Coffin Bay as it is a very beautiful area, however, after some advice from some grey nomads in Port Augusta Maccas we camped in Lincoln NP and we were very happy with the site.
We stopped in at Coffin Bay this morning on our way up the western coast of the Eyre Peninsula.  It is famous for it's oysters and some of the oyster leases can be seen as you drive in.

I would like to say that the highlight of our day were Murphy's Haystacks, granite rock formations on top if a hill (I thought they were pretty cool) however as it is now dark and there are still shrieks of laughter coming from the game of soccer outside, the highlight was meeting Peter and Tammy and their kids at the Haslam camp ground. It's been weeks since the boys have had kids to play with. The caravan parks are full of oldies and it's not school holidays. This family, from WA, is nearing the end of their 2 years around Australia. They were very friendly and welcoming and now I'm worried we won't want to leave tomorrow to begin the Nullabor.

As for the camp ground it's as basic as they come. $5 a night with an honesty box. Toilets are at the beach (byo toilet paper) a short walk from the site. There are quite a lot of people here but it's not full. No showers, I'm now 4 days and counting.

Lincoln National Park

After a trip into Port Lincoln for supplies we spent the rest of the day exploring the NP and our camp site.