Tereza & I went for a walk at 6am along the Esperance waterfront esplanade in front of the caravan park down to the Tanker Wharf, then out along the curved wharf to the end.  The wharf was built in 1934/35 but in 1985, 67 piers rotted away & had to be removed, now there is a gap between the wharf & the end of the pier.  We saw an interesting sight where the sunbeam was shining in a shaft through the early morning clouds.  The Tanker Wharf was covered in pigeons, they flew off as we got closer to them & we could hear all of the cooing from the pigeon nests under the wharf, there must be hundreds of pigeon nests there.  At the shore end of the wharf is a bronze of “Sammy the Sea Lion”, also part of the restoration project conducted by the local Rotary Club.  The cool wind ensured we didn’t stay on the end of the wharf too long & we were back at the Karavan by 7am for breakfast.

We packed & were heading out by 8am to the Esperance bird observation walk & hides.  We had a lovely walk through the large banksias & across the floating bridge, looking at the birdlife & the wildflowers.  The walk across the boardwalk on the other side of the access road was very good for observing wildflowers, we were probably a bit late for a lot of the birds.  Some of the small native orchids in flower are absolutely superb, as were some of the other wildflowers, only Mother Nature could provide such an exquisite beauty.

Next stop was Norseman, around 200km further on, an old gold mining town named after the horse that actually was responsible for finding the gold.  On the corner of the park there is a bronze statue of the horse to recognise the fact.  We stopped at a very nice park next to the visitor centre for lunch then went for a drive up to the lookout on Observation Hill.  It was very disappointing to see the huge piles of very poisonous tailings waste, a sitting time bomb.  Another disappointing thing is that in these mining towns most of the houses are small shacks & there are no beautiful or significant buildings in town.  The mining magnates maybe employ some people but all they are interested is taking the riches out & not putting anything back into the community.

Then on the road again westwards.

To start with, from Norseman the roadside trees consisted of salmon gum & mallee trees, quite pretty.  After a while the countryside changed to lower scrubby type country, then low heath.  We drove on the longest piece of straight road in Australia, 146.6km (90 miles) of unwavering straight before we got to the Caiguna roadhouse bend where we refuelled. It has been a long hard drive into the wind all the way.  Jibilunya Rockhole Rest Area was a welcome sight, just off the road a couple of hundred metres we set up camp just before sunset, 643km for the day from Esperance.  It took a bit of mucking around getting the Karavan in the right spot to get the best protection from the cool south-easterly breeze so that our gas burner would work without too much interference from the wind.

Tereza cooked a magnificent steak Dianne with vegies & John supplied a very nice Chapel Hill red to wash it down. We also had to cook up our vegetables so that we won’t have to throw them away at the quarantine bay as tomorrow we will be crossing from West Australia to South Australia. We sat in our heated Karavan & had a great chat once again.