Travel: Discover Western Australia's gems

Having spent some days fossiking among the heat, red dust and salt lakes of WA’s northern Goldfields I’m looking forward to the ocean. It’s six hours to the south east coast, a steady drive. Highway 94’s black bitumen unfolds and gently undulates, red soil at the verges gives way to an untold extent of natural bush. Hypnotic long straights draw the eye to shimmering heat haze on the horizon. Traffic is sparse but overtaking the occasional five-trailer road-train still requires careful consideration. Every now and then a pungent whiff through the window records yet another ex-kangaroo.

I’m accompanied only by the radio, the ABC’s pompous hourly news theme punctuating excruciating daytime phone-ins. Weighty issues under examination range from the efficacy of surgical enhancements to ‘Why some flatulence is noisy and some silent?’ I find myself pondering this latter conundrum. It’s time to take a break.

Pulling into a rest area by a stand of shady eucalypts, I light the camp stove and brew coffee. From the other side of the clearing a fellow traveller approaches. ‘Have you seen a dog?’ I haven’t. ‘Bastard. He’ll be lying low. Just done too much travelling and he’s sick.’ Al is over sixty and wears the Aussie bloke’s bush uniform of singlet, thongs and stubbies. His skin is tanned to an extent now described as unhealthy. I offer him a cuppa and we swat flies while swapping tales of the road; where we’ve come from, where we’re going, fuel economy, the price of a shower and the lives of dogs. Finally, Al tosses his dregs into the undergrowth, thanks me and stalks off to search out the hound.

Back on the road the Land Cruiser’s V8 rumbles lazily. The miles drift by. I fill up with a hundred Dollars of fuel at the Norseman roadhouse. The humourless attendant demands a further five Dollars for tap water. ‘You crossing the Nullarbor?’ she asks flatly. I’m not and decline her inflated bore water.

By mid-afternoon I leave Highway One outside Esperance, first settled in the 1860s by four sons of Scots pioneer James MacLean Dempster. Searching out shade, I park next to a collection of large sheds housing the town’s museum. Inside, one from among a living history of elderly ladies stops pouring tea and sells me a ticket. Looking around, the line between artefacts and junk is clearly blurred. The effect is engagingly chaotic, part repository of cultural heritage, part house clearance warehouse. Amid fading photographs, dusty aboriginal spears, dry leather-bound ledgers, cassette machines and electric typewriters I discover singed space hardware. Wood and glass cabinets display refrigerator-sized chunks of the Skylab space station that fell to Earth over Esperance in 1979 – the US was fined $400 for ‘littering.’

In the 19th century the Dempsters drove cattle, sheep and horses south from Northam to their 304,000 acre pastoral lease. Their original Esperance homestead, now a private home, still stands at 155 Dempster Street. Agriculture remains the mainstay of the local economy, the port’s grain silos barely able to contain the surrounding wheatbelt’s current bumper harvest. Occasional cruise ships do call in, the big white boats’ cargo of tottering, grey-haired pioneers briefly overwhelming local inhabitants. However, for the most part tourists are itinerant east-coasters, shiny four-wheel-drives hauling caravans, calling in for a day, filling up with fuel and supplies and moving on.

From Esperance’s Twilight Beach Road the coast is an endless string of bays. Aquamarine water fringed by brilliant white sand approaches perfection, until bettered by a neighbouring superlative sandy arc. En route to nowhere, an act of will is required to explore these shores. Unlike the caravanners I plan to stick around, but not here in town.

Thirty-five miles east, 78,500 acres of Cape Le Grand National Park covers a wilder and even more beautiful landscape. The park’s beach-side camping areas promise rainwater tanks and solar showers. I’ve a tent, enough noodles to feed South East Asia, a cask of Yalumba red and a shortwave radio for the BBC – I’m comfortably self-reliant.

Driving east, to my right the islands of the Recherche Archipelago scatter dark voids in twinkling water. In the 1830s they were the lair of Australia’s only pirate, a whaler-gone-bad, Black Jack Anderson. He’s out there still, in the end murdered by his crew and presumed buried on an unnamed islet.

At Wylie Bay signs point off bitumen and onto sand, ‘Le Grand Beach 22km. Max Speed 60km.’ Another take on ‘The Great Ocean Road?’ I let air from the tyres and follow tracks just above the water. It’s a rebellious pleasure taking to the beach, the chance of being bogged and caught by an incoming tide adds frisson to a profoundly foreign activity. In the dunes I pass a family clustered about a barbecue, next to another four-wheel-drive a couple recline beside a cool box. Windows wide open, sea air rushing in, I find myself singing...

At Le Grand Beach the camping area is full. It’s first come, first served, so I set off to the park’s only other campsite. Lucky Bay lives up to its name and I soon bang in the pegs and set up for the night. Among those with tents are a few foreign travellers; two Germans, a trio of Frenchmen, and Gemma and Joe an athletic Scots couple, ticking off entries in a directory of the world’s best windsurfing beaches. I chat with the Scots, eat my noodles and crash out.

Dawn comes quickly, and before the heat of the day I pack a rucksack to hike along the coast. Lucky Bay is officially ‘Australia’s whitest beach’ and in the crisp morning light its brilliant curve of sand set against luminous blue sea is flawless. I aim to follow the shore and cross the rocky peninsula of Mississippi Point to neighbouring Rossiter Bay, less than three hours’ walk.

As I squeak over the sand a fisherman’s four-wheel-drive eases past. He waves and carries on to the beach’s farthest point, stopping above high water before taking his rod, scrambling across a rocky promontory, and casting a line. Before I reach him, the trail turns inland near a cluster of large boulders. Pinned to one of the smooth rocks, a plaque records landfall by British explorer Matthew Flinders in January 1802, part way through an attempted circumnavigation of the land he named ‘Australia’. Assailed by rough seas and a ‘labyrinth of islands and rocks’ Flinders counted himself fortunate to find the bay’s sheltered waters – hence its name.

Looking at the map, all names hereabouts record a litany of fortune, good and ill. Rossiter captained the whaler Mississippi that rescued explorer John Edward Eyre and his aboriginal guide Wylie in 1841. Le Grand was a seaman skilled at navigating from atop a mainmast, Esperance and Recherche were early French oceanographic vessels seeking safe harbour. Elsewhere, Thistle Cove was named for ship’s master, John Thistle who found fresh water during Flinders’ voyage. The origins of Hellfire Bay can only be guessed.

Quickly gaining height, I glance down the coast. The wind is whipping white tops on the waves and I see the Scots windsurfers’ sails carving across the blue of the bay. Trail posts lead over a ridge and drop briefly into the scrub of a sandy valley. I jog through, careful to avoid snakes soaking up sunshine on the path. Then I’m on rock again, climbing to the high point of Mississippi Peak. A mob of Dragon Lizards, tails raised in alarm, skitter across the tinkling rocks of the sunbaked summit. Below, Rossiter Bay is now in sight and I pause to draw breath, take in the views. Lizards cock their heads and quizzically regard me from a safe distance.

Descent is quick and easy. The bay is deserted, there’s no implication it’s ever otherwise. There is no one else. There are no footprints or tyre tracks. No flotsam betrays human existence. I unlace my boots and bathe my feet, then decide upon total immersion in the cool clear water. I’m overtaken by a heady sensation combining freedom and insignificance in dangerous quantities.

Later, at Lucky Bay’s camp I talk to Chris Grace, the new national park camp host. ‘I came in the old bus,’ he motions over his shoulder to an elderly campervan. ‘I wanted to take pictures, landscapes mostly. The park ranger came by and said he needed a host, “What about me?” I said. I called the wife and told her I’d be a bit late home. I’m staying for the season.’ We laugh.

Of late Australia’s tourism marketing has emphasised booming, cosmopolitan cities, upmarket resorts and classy hotels. WA certainly has all these attributes but mostly it has space, and sometimes it’s the places in between that make travel worthwhile. Chris gets up to help some new arrivals. I ponder my wife’s definition of polite lateness.

Fact Box

Emirates (0844 800 2777; www.emirates.com) flies one-stop services to Perth from London and several UK regional airports. Return fares from Glasgow to Perth start at £739pp in Economy and £3,339pp in Business Class.

Nick Redmayne hired a Britz (0800 2008 0801; britz.com) ‘Safari’ Toyota Land Cruiser which comes with underslung water tank, fridge, gas stove, kitchen equipment, tent and sleeping bags.

Travelbag (0845 543 6615; www.travelbag.co.uk) offer seven-day Britz ‘Safari’ hire and Emirates flights from Glasgow to Perth, from £1,239pp based on two sharing. Book by 31st August for travel 1st September to 30th November 2018.

Further information - westernaustralia.com

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