Esperance to Margaret River

Cape Le Grand National Park

We stayed for two nights at the Esperance caravan park and it was a great to not have to drive anywhere and to stock up on some fresh fruit and veg after our Nullarbor trip.  Esperance is a pretty seaside town with everything that you could possibly need.  We finally got the bikes off the caravan and went for a ride along the beach, into town- Aidans first ride on the bike and I could hear him laughing some of the way!  He loved it.





We then headed to the Cape Le Grand National Park, to stay at the Lucky Bay campground.  It was absolutely beautiful driving in; the ocean is a light blue, the sand is white and the rocks surrounding are various colours of brown and red.  Unfortunately it became a bit cool here, but the storm that was meant to hit us never did, which meant that alot of people left the campground after the first night.

We met our friends, the Shearers, for one night.  Flynn loves playing with the boys, and Nick has obtained the nickname 'the tea master' for his bottomless cups of tea served to the boys.

Aidan on the beach

We also met a lovely couple, Dennis and Robyn, who took to the boys and made us fishcakes from salmon caught from the beach that afternoon, Robyn read and drew with Flynn and then we had chockies and a slide night in their very luxurious caravan!

The tourist brochures for Lucky Bay always include a kangaroo lying on the beach in the sunshine.  Unfortunately there wasn't much sunshine but there were some very friendly kangaroos.  We wished they weren't so friendly as Flynn took to chasing them.  My heart was in my mouth a few times when the kangaroo just didn't run away and but stood their ground and growled at Flynn.  He finally got the message to stop chasing them.  And the kangaroos did visit the beach, but must only lie around in the nice weather.  They did however sneak to the back of the car and eat the bait that Nick and Dennis were using whilst fishing.  They had to be pushed away to get them out of it- not afraid of humans at all!

Couldn't get a photo of kangaroo laying on beach, so Aidan will do!

Flynn  loves the huge mounds of sea grass!

All rugged up for a walk

Nick getting hairier each blog!!

We then had a couple of driving days to get to Denmark, which is such a gorgeous town, surrounded by green farming land, forests and the ocean.  We stayed next to a river that ran into a lake that was very still and misty, very pretty.  We had another ride on the bikes along the lake where we met a lady riding her horse after work- that looked like a nice way to end the day!   

We did a lot of driving to get to Margaret River with a few stops at spots along the coast and the forest.  We stayed at the Shannon National Park for a night and again were the only ones in the camp ground.  Nick had a great night with a bottle of wine and an open fire while I stayed up as long as I could before going to bed.  Not sure what was happening out there, but it sounded like fun!!  We took lots of photos of very big trees with holes in the bottom of them- wont bore you with too many photos!  We did the Valley of the Giants treetop walk.  Also took a tramcar ride through the forrest at Pemberton where every time we stopped for some commentary, Flynn yelled out 'ready, set, go'!  Was funny the first few times!

We are staying just out of Margaret River on a working farm, and Flynn is loving feeding the animals each night- three cows, goats, sheep and a horse.  He seems to have a soft spot for sheep for some reason, so we decided to visit a local sheep farm where they have shearing demonstrations; it was fantastic.  The kids were able to get involved and we watched a sheep being shorn, dogs rounding up the sheep and we all gave a lamb a bottle of milk.  Nick then had the job of burping him- seriously!!  Flynn and the other little kids were then able to jump in the pen with the lambs.  He loved it, he was herding them around and cuddling them.  It was so cute!

We visited the Nilgili cave, which the photos didnt do justice to it.  It was a kilometre long, and a guide takes you down and leaves you to walk at your own pace.  There was a huge cavernous room that was beautiful and Flynn loved climbing up and down the steps and there was a safe tunnel made for kids which I really didn't want to get into, but he crawled the 50m through it without any problems.  About half way through he lost it a bit and wanted to run off and do his own thing, but we managed to salvage the situation.

We haven't visited many wineries at Margaret River, but have had a fantastic time anyway.  We sampled some of the produce at various farm properties, had some Margaret River chocolate, cheese and went to a dairy farm that has their own ice creamery.

Flynn has learnt to ride his bike independently which was exciting- then we stayed at a camp site with steep hills!

We are looking forward to heading towards warmer weather with one last stop on our way to Perth!