Well today was a day was a day. I gather that Perth copped a bit of a bashing, up here we have had wind and rain but than keeping us in Norseman not dramatic. The wind was fairly strong and coming from the north and guess where we were planning to go. We spent the day collecting the balance of Elaine's meds then back to the visitor centre where we had lunch. Then back to the football oval for tonight.

The Elaine report says basically no change, although to me she seems to be just a little better.

Just to catch up on a few notes that I made along the way and have not used yet. On the way to and from Lucky Bay we passed a couple of large tree farms growing what appeared (to me) to be very tall, very thin eucalypts. There appeared to have been some sort underbrush clearing fire being replace by new leaves starting at the bottom of the trees. We are also intrigued by power poles, our understanding being that property owners are responsible for the maintenance of the poles on their property. Fair enough except that we saw lots of poles carrying power to the community (in other words going past the property) just inside property fencelines and wonder who maintains them.

 Our only complaint in the Le Grand National Park was the lack of a dump point for our toilet, either at the campground or nearby.

At Gibson Soak, which is a very small town of maybe 20 houses, there was an fairly large operational factory called the Gibson Soak Water Company.

Last night we stayed at Bromus Dam which, as I said, is a very old catchment that does not appear to be in current use. The area around the dam is set up as a bush camping area with tables, fire pits and lots of ad hoc spots to camp on. There were only 4 of us last night but there is room for large numbers of  campers who would need to be self contained.  My only comment is that it would benefit from a story board detailing the history of the site. There is evidence that there was infrastructure around the dam and there is a pipe coming into the dam from quite some distance away. This pipe is large, I guess about 1 mtr diameter, laid on the ground then covered to create a prominent mound. Where it enters the dam there is a spillway so my guess is that it brings water from somewhere.

As usual we were last out, by a large margin, and drove into Norseman where we picked up some medications. Then we went to the visitor centre to dump and top up our water tanks. Whilst there one of the staff directed us to a free camp for self contained vehicles at the football oval, which is where we are now. Oh, and the other thing that we had to do was get someone to fix our generator as the cloudy weather is not good for our batteries and last night it would not start and resisted my efforts to get it going.  It turned out that the issue was old fuel gumming up the carburettor and it is now doing it's job of topping up the batteries.

My loyal readers !!! will note that the last 2 days blogs have been published out of order.

The Elaine report says marginal improvement today but still a long way from good.

Today we have traveled about 180 km north stopping just south, about 30 kms, of Norseman. On the way we stopped for morning tea, at 12.20 pm, and discovered that someone have left last nights fire still smouldering. A definite nono so we shifted the big logs out and doused it as well as we could with our limited water, leaving it still not quite out but safe. We then reported it at the next town just 8 km away. This was Grass Patch and there and the next town, Salmon Gums had unusual church buildings.  They were similar sort of multi sided, but flat sides without the usual church rounded  doors, fancy roofs and windows  etc.

Our camp tonight is at a place called Bromus Dam and is a very old dam with rock walls etc. Quite a large area with lots of space, set a little way off the road but we can still just hear the trucks as they go past. This is our first bush camp of the trip and we have had our first fire (in our fire pit for safety) on which Elaine made a soup ( a little salty in her view, but I liked it) and cooked some lamb shanks for tomorrow.

Tuesday May 17

No blog last night, we didn't have coverage and I got lazy after making and eating dinner!

The Elaine report...She had a bad day yesterday and a reasonable day today. In fact my lady went for a walk down to the beach today, not far but down and up about 30 stairs.

We are at Lucky Bay in the Cape Le Grand National Park. This campground has about 22 sites but is the process of expanding to about 60 including one for tour buses. Already just up the hill from us are a bundle of sites almost ready for occupation. There is also basic facilities including warm and cold showers, camp kitchen with hot and cold water for cleaning dishes. The whole shebang watched over by a very nice camp host, who also collects the camping fees. The camp also boasts a whole bunch of camera friendly kangaroos. In fact on my walk today, cutting through a bush track, I almost tripped over a few of them having a midday rest, so I chatted to them as I walked past and they did not move.

The bay is rather pretty with continual small surf, it puts us to sleep at night and a very white very fine curving beach about 2 km long. There are also some fairly speccie big rocks alongside the camp. I have taken a couple of walks, unfortunately not bushwalks but good anyway with views out over the hinterland and the ocean with the Recerce Archipelago in the background.

Report first Elaine appears to have a better day, but last night was really bad.

We are on the move again having passed through Esperance (with much shopping as Elaine has been deprived for the last week or so) on the way to Gibsons Soak Hotel where we have camped for the night. Self contained units are allowed to stay here and we have just one neighbor.

The 120 km detour to Lucky Bay was well worth the effort as the scenery is very nice and the facilities were excellent. Our camp was about 50 mtrs from the beach in a spectacular bay, light surf and turquoise waters and the best white sand.  Lots of friendly kangaroos (or maybe wallabies as they were fairly small), ample space in each bay. The bay sizes are sometimes a problem as they try to fit too many campers into the campground, but this one was ok.

After leaving the camp we drove to a few places so that Elaine did not miss out on the spectacular scenery. I had seen a bit on my walks and one could easily spend a few weeks here taking in the walk trails.

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.

First a progress report on Elaine, today was reasonably good but the pain is back tonight, just not as bad as it has been. The morning is always hard (getting everything working in the cold) and she did not do anything to aggravate it today. So fingers crossed that it will keep improving.

This mornings walk was about 4.5 km, but felt like a lot more than that, from the campsite to Hammersly Beach via the picnic area. This is my favourite sort of walk through bushland on a narrow well defined and marked track with occasional vistas over the inlet then the beach. At the start of the walk there was a set of stairs, not as much as Jacobs Ladder but extensive and just a starter. The walk was continually up hill then down into hollows, some with steps some without, over the dunes.So at the end I felt that I had done a weeks exercise but it was worth it for some great views of the whole inlet, which is huge, and the beach. The inlet is blocked off from the sea by a substantial sand bar which had quite big waves breaking on it and the rocks in the middle of it, so no entry for seagoing boats. I heard lots of birds but most of them were fairly shy.

Hakea is the resident flower here and is abundant and rather speccie. We left after breakfast (about 10.30!) the camp and took the scenic drive calling at the various beachs and camera opportunities. There is a lot of these and we were treated to some magnificent scenery most of it from high hills. This national park is definitely a well hidden secret, maybe not, but I hadn't heard much about and just chose it because the WA tourism site said it was nice, understatement it is very spectacular (I know I use this word a lot, mainly because it applies to a lot of the places that we see). The scenery is bushland on rolling, high, hills and and clifftop ocean views. It is not wildflower season, but there is lots to see, the season must be beautiful.

Tonight we are camped at the other site on the eastern side of the park, the Four Mile Beach Campground.