Well arrived at Esperence and it is still storming. It is freezing cold – and we are all rugged up with thermals, beanies, ugg boots, and down jacket’s. Esperence has experienced flooding and the radio is issuing storm warnings – saying to stay home and advising against any travel…….. too late for us!
We decide to hedge our bets and to stay over night at the caravan park in a fairly sheltered site. Next morning it was off to the Le Grande National Park where we spent the next three days enjoying the stunning coastline and walks to Hellfire Bay, Lucky Bay, Frenchmans Peak and Whistling Rock. We introduced ourselves to a very friendly sea lion at Esperence Jetty, and Ethan was lucky enough to be given a bucket full of fish to feed the seal by one of the locals – Ethan loved it!
From Esperence it was on to Albany where we stayed the night in a caravan park – yahoo showers….and a great camp kitchen where we heard some amazing stories from the camp maintenance guy who was an ex professional fisherman. Ethan was very impressed as this caravan park had a recreation room complete with air hockey; billiard table; table tennis and nascar racing game. Eth and Steve headed off after dinner and showers to give Ethan his first ever lesson at Billiards.
Whilst at Albany we visited the site of the old whaling station (the last one operating in Australia – closed in 1978) which has now been converted to “whale world”.
Although very ‘touristy” it was also very informative. Ethan had been involved in a long conversation with one of the staff (while Steve and I were in one of the exhibits before the tour started), and he had apparently spoken about how we shouldn’t kill whales and how glad he was that whaling in Australia had discontinued. The staff were very impressed by him and made a point of talking to Steve and I about how informed and environmentally aware and sensitive they thought he was…..always lovely to hear someone praise one of your children!!!
I’m not sure whether Ethan’s vocalized objections to whaling made any difference, but the tour guide delivered an informative tour that was sensitively given and gave both an environmental perspective as well as talking about the effect on Albany and the population when the whaling station was first closed. The tour also provided a real insight into the sights, sounds and smells (none of which were pleasant) of an operating whaling station.
We also visited the wind farm at sunset – huge!!!
