Travel Throwback Thursday - Roadtrip to Esperance, WA.

It's that time of the month - Travel Throwback Thursday! This month I'm going to tell you all about one of the most memorable roadtrips my family ever took when we lived in Australia. Last month I told you all  about our trip to Uluru, and this month I'm going to tell you about our roadtrip to Esperance, which is home to one of the most famous beaches in the world; Lucky Bay. 

Now you'll have to forgive the photos, this was before I got my SLR (I actually got it a few weeks after we got back from this trip), so they were just shot on a little point and shoot. We went to Esperance in January 2008, it was the school holidays and we wanted to make the most of the long summer holidays. We went to Esperance via Hyden, which is where the famous Wave Rock is. On the way we passed through the wheatbelt and teeny tiny little farming towns...

However, we stayed in Hyden two nights too long (we were there for two nights...). I told you very briefly about the hotel we stayed at in Hyden in the March Travel Linkup - Disastrous Hotel Stays, basically Hyden is a great place to visit for a couple of hours just to see Wave Rock, but that's the only thing there. The rest of it looks sort of like this...

Kidding. That's just the area where we were staying.

We made the time pass by pretending to canoe in the middle of an empty salt lake...

Prancing around the lake....

Visiting the Hippo's Mouth....

Taking a look at some local art....

And obviously seeing Wave Rock...

In the evenings we drove around randomly looking for wildlife, and found a coupla kangas...

We also saw this incredible sunset.

And my brother and I watched films on his PSP (old school or what...this was 2008 guys).

When we finally left Hyden we continued our drive through the wheatbelt, passing through small towns in the middle of the outback until we finally reached the small town of Esperance. We stayed in a townhouse which was really nice and modern! There was far more to do here, and we had a really great time! 

Dad and I made this sea lion really angry by walking up to it taking photos, then all of a sudden it started chasing us and we both ran up the beach screaming. The sea lion was surprisingly fast, and we had to leap up onto the boardwalk to get away from it! 

We also climbed up this massive sand dune...and I lost my flip flop. Thankfully I found it again after lots of searching in the sand!

Naturally we couldn't go to Esperance without visiting the national park and beaches within it, especially as it was the height of summer and the temperature was in the high 30's/low 40's. Lucky Bay was just breathtaking. The sand was so pure and clean it squeaked beneath your feet, and the water was crystal clear. There are absolutely no filters on these photos, and I haven't edited them at all... 

We also checked out some of the other beaches, and were preeeeetty impressed with what we saw!

We also saw some pretty impressive sunsets in Esperance as well!

Next stop on our roadtrip was Bremer Bay. On the way we stopped off to see the Rabbit Proof Fence, which is a state fence built to keep rabbits and vermin out of the state of Western Australia. It was also the subject of the incredible film Rabbit-Proof Fence (see the 2002 trailer here), which is about the Stolen Generation and well worth a watch if you don't know much about this dark part of Australia's history.

The water here was as clear as Esperance, and Bremer Bay was full of 4WD enthusiasts making the most of the off-road tracks.

Dad thought he'd have a go on a 4WD track. Yeh...real adventurous huh... :|

After a day or two in Bremer Bay we drove back up to Perth via Busselton, you can see below the full loop we did! We covered nearly 2,000km in just over a week.

But what an epic family roadtrip! We still laugh about it today, and I'd love to go back to Esperance some day, it was just spectacular!