Week 42: Cape Le Grand NP WA - Kalgoorlie WA

 Stats Overview

Kms Travelled: 749

Kms Hiked: 5

No. of Camps: 4

The Adventures

Without realising it, we have just completed our last week of travel in Western Australia! We have spent just over 4 months over here on the west coast and have absolutely loved it. Although we are happy to admit that we are starting to look forward to returning home and enjoying some actual warm, summer temps. These days we frequently find ourselves comparing the weather we are experiencing with the weather back home and have decided Queensland is a very good state to live!

We started this week back in Esperance where we were very lucky to get a day of warmth and sunshine to go and explore more of the beaches. We ended up having a pretty special experience at Hellfire Bay when a seal came into shore and put on a show for us! I will admit that when Will said he could see something in the water I headed swiftly back to shore, because in my mind the only thing that swims in the southern ocean is Great White sharks. Fortunately that was not the case, although Will did cop an earful about going out to investigate things he can see in the water afterwards! While we were in Esperance we also treated Bertie to a spa day and discovered she needs a bit of work done, which was not the news that we wanted to hear! Fortunately none of the work is urgent so we have decided to push on with our travels and will sort the car out when we get across to SA.

After Esperance we headed north to Kalgoorlie to explore the grand, old gold mining town. Will's big drawcard for Kalgoorlie was to visit the Super Pit which is one of Australia's largest open-cut gold mines. The pit is currently at a depth of over 700m and it takes a fully loaded dump truck nearly an hour to make it back to the surface to dump its load. We did "treat" ourselves to the Super Pit tour and it was pretty interesting to see a big mining operation in action, however, we didn't actually get to see any of the end product which was a bit disappointing! While we were around Kalgoorlie we also discovered some more huge granite rocks to explore. It was actually quite interesting to learn that a lot of these rocks were used to collect and store water for the early settlers in the area. Prior to colonisation they were also an important watering point for the Aboriginal people too. We have found it quite fascinating seeing and learning about the huge rocks as we had kind of written them off as "just a bunch of boring rocks". Although our experience at one of the rocks was mixed as we discovered that feral donkeys also called it home. We can confirm that the scariest sounding animals in the dark are donkeys -man they can make some unnerving sounds!

Our plan now is to head cross the Nullarbor and back into South Australia. By the look of the map, we might also be having our biggest week of kilometres to date!

Kodak Moments

So many pretty, secluded bays to explore in Cape Le Grand NP! - Little Hellfire Bay

We are going to miss the beautiful waters of Esperance! - Blue Haven

After lots of running after his hat, Will discovered the best way to carry it around in the big winds of the south coast! - Esperance

To give you an idea of how big this rock is...that tiny speck on the right hand side is Will...and this is only a tiny snippet of the whole thing! - Cave Hill Rock

These small dam walls were built on many of the regions granite rocks to collect the rain water and funnel it into a dam. This rock is so big it has four dams! - Cave Hill Rock

We have seen some incredible sunset colours recently! - Cave Hill Rock

We had an unusual visitor this week...although at least it had legs! A snake would have been much worse! Cave Hill Rock

Will finally got his dose of a mine site, hi-vis and a hardhat...although this is one of the rare times he hasn't been paid to dress up! - Kalgoorlie