Western Australia - Pt 6

The next few days involved a LOT of long days driving.

Before leaving Albany, we had to visit Dog Rock - reliving another childhood memory for me! This is a rock in the middle of town that's shaped like a dog's head. There's both Aboriginal and urban legends about the rock but regardless, I think it's pretty cool :)

We left Albany and drove towards Esperance, stopping briefly along the way to look at the remains of the Rabbit Proof fence (aka the State Vermin Fence). It was a pest-exclusion fence constructed between 1901 and 1907 to keep rabbits and other agricultural pests, from the east, out of Western Australian pastoral areas.

(Actually to be honest, we stopped because there was a geocache here - we were on a mission to do a cache every day of August - and we achieved it. We did choose this cache because of the history though.)

Now the fence wouldn't even keep a cow out, let alone a rabbit!

It was coming into wildflower season in WA, so there were stunning native wildflowers in many places along the roadside - and in the remaining green spaces that hadn't been turned into canola fields...

After about 6 hours driving, we finally arrived in Esperance, a port city known for the whiteness of its beaches. Esperance Wharf was the setting for a scene in an audio book Billy had listened to, so he was keen to see the town. It was dusk by the time we arrived and did some grocery shopping.

This does NOT look like one of the white beaches - presumably they were elsewhere! You can however see the jetty and the lights of the wharf in the distance.

On our way out of Esperance the next morning, we detoured to look at the Pink Lake - a salt lake that can appear pink in colour when the right temperature, salinity and algae concentration are reached. Obviously the time of year we were there didn't have the right conditions, as it was just the usual blue. Still pretty anyway!

We had to retrace a couple of hours of our previous day's journey, before heading north to Hyden, home of Wave Rock, a natural rock formation shaped like a breaking wave. It is stunning and quite awe inspiring. The colours changes depending on the light.

This gives you an idea of the height of it.

We stayed at Wave Rock overnight, then left early for another long day of driving. We were on the tail end of the trip by now, and getting quite weary.

I think the only interesting part of this day was the stop at the Dog Cemetery at Corrigin. This stop was also because a geocache was placed in an interesting location!

There are over 80 dogs buried here, some with touching tributes like this one:

We stayed overnight at a caravan park in the tiny hamlet of Ledge Pt (north of Perth). We had dinner in the nearby sports clubs and had possibly one of the nicest, friendliest meals we'd had all trip!