First the Elaine report - not good but better than yesterday.

Last night we camped at Farmstay called Paradise Farm, somewhat an exaggeration, but very nice. We had cows all around that left the usual cow pats which I had to dodge when I worked around the farm. This is a fairly small farm, only 150 acres, about 30 kms from Esperance. There are a few farms around him of similar size with larger farms surrounding these small farms.

After breakfast etc we drove into town. One of the major advertised attractions is the Pink Lake so we took a route to go past it and to go along the coast into town. As pink lakes go we have seen much better, amongst other things it had shrunk considerably and was hard to even see! As for the run along the coast, it didn't happen even though we followed the signs, or though that we did. Morning tea was consumed overlooking the port which consists of just one, maybe 2 jettys, as far as we could see. They had just finished loading a large ore carrier, or similar, and we watched while they began to ease it of the jetty. Based on experience in Dampier and the size of the ship the whole procedure could take hours.....we didn't stay that long. The town itself was all shut down so we had to drove back to suburban IGA to pick up some much needed shopping and to use a laundromat.

Then we drove out to the Le Grand National Park, about 50 kms the other side of town. On the way in we passed "Stonehenge", a reasonable facsimile thereof. We moved on after taking a photograph as the wanted a $10 entry fee to get closer, mind you one could also buy food there. Then on to our chosen camp at Lucky Bay. There are 2 campgrounds here one on the main road and this one 9 kms further on. There are only 15 bays here so arriving at 3pm we got one of the last few. Like most national parks in WA there is a vehicle entry fee and a seperate charge for camping, in our case $6 plus 2 nights at 13.20 per night which is quite reasonable. They provide well prepared level parking bays, basic facilities in this case including hot showers, I presume solar heated, otherwise self contained vehicles are required. We have a site with million dollar views over the bay and will explore in more detail tomorrow.