We made it to Western Australia

Crossing the Nullarbor, as expected, was a rather boring exercise. It’s a long straight road, not a single town, or even a junction for 1200 km. Just road houses, road trains and heaps of caravans. It also features the longest stretch of straight road in Australia: 147 km without a single curve. Exciting.

This trip takes most people a couple of days. Our daily limit mainly depends on how long the kids can sit in the car without getting too grumpy, so we were quite surprised that we managed to do 670 km on the first day. That means that the 1200 km to Norseman only took us 2 days instead of 3. And due to a 3 hour time difference, we arrived in Norseman around 2pm local time after a long day of driving.

We set up camp and then went to the free local pool for a swim, which was great on a 32 degrees day.

On the last day, we only had 200 km left to get to Esperance, which was a nice and short trip.

Esperance

While still pretty remote, Esperance is popular with tourists and famous for its beaches and National Parks. We went to Cape LeGrand beach on a day trip. This beach is 37 km long and only has entrances on the ends. Luckily the sand is firm enough that you can easily drive on it. We found a place with nobody around, parked the car on the beach and set up a picnic. The water was a bit too chilly to swim, but the kids had heaps of fun digging channels in the pristine white sand for hours. The views of turquoise water with rock formations in the background were spectacular.

We finally went for a swim at Twilight Beach, our favourite. Pristine white sand, crystal clear water and some granite rocks scattered around. We ended up standing in the middle of a massive school of tiny fish, trying to make its way around the rocks. We explored a few more beaches in the area and it’s hard to decide which one is the most beautiful.

Albany

Next stop was Albany, a very old city on the coast. There’s also a few mountains in the area, and we were delighted to witness that the kids seem to have a thing for bushwalks. We went for a scenic drive through Stirling Ranges, where Western Australia’s highest mountains are. A sign promised a nice lookout somewhere between the mountains, so we parked the car, expecting a short stroll. It turned out to be quite a steep climb and it took us an hour, completely unprepared, without water and in shorts and thongs and ummm… princess dresses. The kids were super excited though and the view was amazing.

Next day trip was to Porongurup National Park, another mountains range. This time properly prepared, we took on the 2 hour walk up the mountain to the Granite Skywalk. There was a lot of climbing involved, but the kids walked the whole way up and down without complaining. The view was spectacular, and so were the rock formations on the way.

In the area, there were also some more amazing beaches, unfortunately still a bit too cold to swim.

Denmark

Our last stop in the area was Denmark, a quirky little town full of tourists and hippies. The main thing to do here was looking at more fantastic beaches. We spent most afternoons on various beaches. When it was sunny, we even jumped into the cool water. Close to sunset we watched a legion of crabs climbing out under the rocks at Elephant Rocks, feeding on moss on the rocks.

Next steps

We have now travelled a bit inland and just arrived at Beedelup, swapping the beaches for forests and waterfalls for a while. We’ll spend the next 2 weeks in the area, as it’s hard to find a camp site during Easter and school holidays once you get closer to Perth.