It looks like another sunny day in Esperance today, before we leave tomorrow morning to begin our journey across the Nullarbor Plain.
There is a Sunday market on this morning, the Museum Village Markets. It is held at Museum Park, where collection of old historic buildings have been relocated. It was previously the town's old railway marshalling yards.There is a schoolhouse, an old Methodist Church, Police Quarters etc. The buildings have all been repurposed into shops and restaurants. There is ample green space in between buildings for market stalls.
There are plenty of spare spaces, but enough stalls to make it interesting.
As we are going to be away from civilisation for much of the next week, our next stop is the supermarket to top up our provisions. to our amazement, Woolworth's is closed on Sundays. IGA however was happy to take our money.
Once everything was packed away we wandered down the front of the park where a coffee van appears daily and enjoyed a cup of coffee in the sun looking out over the water.
Most of the items recommended by the tourist information centre have been ticked off our list. The only remaining one was a visit to the "Old Wind Farm", just out of town on the Great Ocean Drive. It is poorly signposted but you can see the sole remaining wind generator on the hill, so turned in that direction and hoped for the best. As well as a bit of history, the views from there are supposed to be very good.
The wind farm comprised 6 turbines that were commissioned in 1987, making it Australia's First Windfarm. It supplied up to 360kw to Esperance over 13 years before being decommissioned. it was apparently an experimental windfarm using Australian designed and built turbines. Decommissioning seemed to involve cutting them off at the base, retaining one for historical reasons and turning the track carved out of the natural vegetation into a Heritage Trail.
The photo from google maps below shows that rehabilitation was not high on the agenda.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to see what the first commercial wind turbines in Australia looked like.
No 1 turbine is still standing (but not functioning)
No2 turbine was replaced with a lookout which gives a good coastal view (below)
The sign below was one of the few that was readable, the others being totally faded or overgrown.
The heritage walk takes you to each of the sites of the 6 turbines, the structures of which have been removed, but the foundations remain.
The history of wind turbines in Esperance continues. A new wind farm was established at 10 Mile Lagoon in 1993, using 9 x 225 kw Vestas turbines, encouraged by learnings from the Salmon Beach Experiment. It was decommissioned in 2022 following several years of inactivity. At the end of their usable life it was apparently not viable to replace them on this site. Not a lot has changed !!!
On the way back to our caravan park we pulled in to one of the lookouts we had visited 2 days ago when it was blowing a gale to see how different things may look under better conditions.
Photos from Blue Haven Lookout
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