Day 105: Ravensthorpe to Esperance

 


There is little of consequence between Ravensthorpe and Esperance, so we drive straight through, arriving at our caravan park at around 11 am. We have light rain for some of the way and it remained overcast most of the day.  Tomorrow's forecast looks similar. The park is not busy and we have been allocated a good site.


For lunch we headed into the town centre, found a carpark and had a cursory look around before settling on the Sandy Hook Tavern to dine at. The food was good pub food and filled us up. We looked at the local bakery to get some fresh bread, but nothing there too our fancy. From a brochure we had been given, we found there was another bakery just on the edge of town in a bushland setting. We included a visit there during our explorations and picked up a good looking loaf of sourdough.

As has been our custom on this trip, we stopped in at the Tourist Information Centre and collected information and ideas on how to fill the next two days.

Our random drive around took us to the port. The Port of Esperance is the only deepwater port in the South of WA. It services predominantly the mining, agricultural and forestry industries. It handles both bulk and container shipping.


Port of Esperance

Not far from the port is a small Taylor Street jetty which is a base for commercial and tourism operators


For recreation purposes there is an impressive 415 m New Esperance Jetty. It replaced the 875 m Historic Tanker Wooden Jetty that once occupied this space until it fell into disrepair.




Out to sea from the harbour is the Archipelago of the Recherche, known as the Bay of Isles. It includes 105 islands and stretches for 230 km of coastline.

On the drive to get the sourdough bread, which is excellent, we went out towards Pink Lake. Unfortunately, Pink Lake is no longer pink. The environmental conditions that supported the microbes that made it pink have been changed through reduced salinity, contributed to by a number of factors involved in developing the region.

However, we did drive past the Pink Lake Golf Club and drove in to have a look. At $25 for 18 holes it looks like a bargain.


It looked pretty good with grass on fairways and greens


We need to work out our plan for the next few days and take all of the information collected back to read through, so we head home to come up with our program for the next 2 days.





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