Esperance to Hyden, Western Australia
First: we drive along the best oceanside drive we've done in Australia. It's achingly scenic, and we rate it as one of the best seaside drives in the world.
Then, we go bush, and become the sole visitors in a 100 square kilometer national park. We know this because we climbed to the solitary peak in the middle of the park--Peak Charles, 652 meters high--and we can't see anyone, or anything manmade save the roads--for 100 kilometers in any direction. A wonderful feeling of remoteness.
We got up. Chris made tea, and yelled at me for leaving the heater on upstairs. Oops. We're a bit sorry to leave. This place is great. Esperance is great. If we lived in Perth, this'd be a great place to get away for a four day holiday, or even a week. So we leave--it's a good 400km, or five hours driving, to Hyden. Looking on the map, we can get to Hyden by taking the sealed road to Ravensthorpe, then north... or cut through 200 kilometers of bush and visit a few remote parks. We choose the latter.
First, though, there's just a few things to see in Esperance. First, the coastal drive. We've seen it on the maps, and almost pass it by on our hurry out of town. But are we glad we didn't.
The Esperance Coastal Drive
It's stunning. The distance is not great, maybe 30 kilometers. But the road is amazing, and the views fantastic. You start out in the town itself, then head west, as the road dips down to the ocean beaches, then climbs high onto the cliff tops. Along the way, we stop at lookouts, taking in the barren granite islands offshore, the white sand, and the light electric blue of the ocean. I thought only swimming pools could be that color. It's just hard to describe. The pictures really do a much better job.
As we head up and down the headlands, we fine each beach and cove is different. In one is a prototypical small cove, perfect for a family or two. In another, huge granite slabs gently slope to the ocean, where the waves slosh onto them and make interesting sine wave patterns as they advance and retreat. A third has big rocks. The last beach is Nine Mile Beach, a long stretch of sand and very shallow water, with the waves breaking far offshore.
It's all spectacular.
Peak Charles National Park
We drive north, stopping briefly at a park outside Esperance where I enjoy sitting on massive zamia palms. (It's a hobby.) At a short roadside stop 50 kilometers north of town, I spot a new banksia I haven't seen in the wild: Banksia blechnifolia, one I had in the yard until I killed it last summer by not watering it. Doh!
Then we cut west to Peak Charles. It's highly visible--it rises up 400 meters from the surrounding plain, in a very typical primary-school mountain drawing fashion. It's big, and as we come closer, we see it's just a huge block of gray and orange granite. Very cool. After lunch, we give it a go, and start climbing up the 3 kilometer trail to the top. It's windy, a bit scary, but the view is wonderful. Lots of interesting plants too.
And on top, I feel alone. There's nothing out there. If I were to fall off the mountain, it'd be a long while before anyone but Chris noticed. There are no roads, no wheat fields, no sheep paddocks. All I can see on plains around me are a few minor hills, a few dry lakebeds, and low mallee woodlands. It's a feeling of lonely immensity. Oddly, I don't feel at all emotional. It's lonely, it's immense, but it's not sad or melancholy. It just a void, it just is.
To Hyden
From there to Hyden is fairly uneventful. It's a 180 kilometers down the dirt track to Lake King. We stop at the curious Lilian Stokes Rock about 50 kays outside of Lake King, around 4:30pm, where four or five gray nomads are already sucking stubbies down around the campfire... and ask them... where's the rock? Turns out we're standing on it, for all around are large bare granite patches. Strange. We take some pictures, I spot a grazing wallaby, and we leave.
After Lake King, we're now on the fringe of the wheatbelt, and it's a pleasant drive. I amuse myself by trying to spot salinity problems in the fields, and it's not hard: stunted wheat in the lower areas, or no wheat at all; sometimes I see odd contouring drains or obvious signs of revegetation plantings. But only occasionally do I see a white crust around a low lying pool of water. Salinity's a bit more than a white salt crystals, and isn't that easy to see.
We pull into Hyden just after dark, watch some TV, and sleep for the night.
Weird Wildlife Sighting
That strange wallaby at Lillian Stokes Rock. Had a pretty striped face, and a stubby tail. Wonder what it was.
Where we stayed
- Wave Rock Motel, Hyden
- $108 - twin motel room
- Overpriced. Lots of German tourists complaining about their wives in the restaurant.