Saturday 22 September – Wow! What a dreadful night we had last night.  No sooner had I posted my blog when we were hit by gale force winds and heavy downpours which lasted pretty well right through the night.  It was slightly calmer today, but we have still been blessed with intermittent heavy showers and very gusty winds, so not the greatest day weatherwise. We were concerned last night as the van was really being battered by the wind, so when Grant found a brief temporary easing of the rain, braving the elements, he went out and tied ropes to the struts which support the van roof, and tied them to the roof racks on the car.  So if the van had taken off with us in it, then the car was coming too!  And the allen key (solution to the roof stay caving in a couple of times a few weeks ago) held firm, so we weren’t woken by the canvas wrapping itself around our ears.

The squally weather this morning meant that we weren’t going to see the sights in their best light, but, intrepid travellers that we are, we sallied forth and did the Great Ocean Drive.  This is a drive of about 25 km which (as the name amazingly describes) follows the coastline westward for about two thirds of the distance, then branches inland and returns to the town centre via Pink Lake.  The scenery is beautiful, and even with the heavy skies, the water was a stunning turquoise colour.  There were large waves crashing to the shore, and as the land is very rocky, and shelves of rock go straight down to the sea and continue out under the water, there were waves hitting rocks well out from shore and making quite a spectacle.

The beautiful water and sand at Esperance.

  A couple of whackos in the cold conditions.

We drove into every bay and lookout spot, though as the rain again hit, the viewing was pretty limited.  We can only imagine how beautiful it would be on one of our typical Victorian sunny days!  Pink Lake is a pretty big lake which didn’t look very pink today, but if you tried hard you could see it a bit pinkish.  Apparently it goes pink regularly as a result of the green algae and/ or high concentration of brine shrimp.  And when all the statistical figures (salinity, temperature, algae levels, shrimps, etc) align, then the water appears pink.

By a little after midday we were back at camp, had lunch and hung around till about mid afternoon hoping for the weather to improve.  Rugged up in windcheaters, heater on and the footy on the wireless made us feel like we were back home! It obviously wasn’t going to suddenly become fine, so we went for another drive along the coast in an easterly direction.  There were three massive ships there – one at the wharf to be loaded and the other two out in the bay waiting, I suppose.  There were some very fancy houses along this strip of the coast, all of them with million dollar views.

Now we have had tea, the footy is over and next week’s Grand Finalists have been decided, and our visit to Esperance is almost over.  I really like it here and hope we can one day come back and have a good stay here, with calm waters, sunshine and just the gentlest of breezes.