Oh, the Places We've Seen: 022

Sorry... this had to be at the start of the post. There's just too much awesomeness in it to be swallowed up by a blog post that may be skimmed over...,

Waking up to the usual screaming early WA daylight found us parked literally in a paddock right next to the pub. A great little concept, making use of an otherwise low value piece of land and creating income and revenue for a small little township. Should be more of it.

Yep... lucky I've been working on my caravan parking skills...

We pulled out of Gibson early with the intention to try and get out to Lucky Bay (LB) mid-morning to try and snaffle a campground. The LB Campground works on a first in best dressed rule and no bookings are taken. Being school holidays and an impending long weekend coming up for ANZAC Day, we didn’t want to take any chances.

Around 10km in, that pesky engine light returned…. Hmmm…. OK, maybe we’ll stop in Esperance and get the local Holden dealer to have a once over it. Except, Esperance is completely devoid of a Holden dealership. Has pretty much every other make under the sun, but not the General. So we took an impromptu breakfast on the waterfront whilst I once again tried to make some calls.

OK... so how many of you have had a bowl of Cheerios like this?

Turned out the nearest service centre was Albany, some 500km away. Whilst I waited for Holden to call back with a potential “local bloke” I took the opportunity to go into the local Telstra shop and change my phone over to the Telstra network in an attempt to improve our phone coverage around the country. A 45min wait in a queue was thankfully met with an incredibly helpful staff member who changed me over no problem whatsoever. And whilst we’ve still had limited reception over the past week, I think it will be a handy move.

Still no word from Holden, and with the clock ticking, we pushed on to Lucky Bay. With no issues from The Rock Truck, we arrived at the Cape Le Grande National Park with little to no fuss.

Now before I get into describing LB Campground and LB itself, it’s fair to say I’ll probably run out of adjectives and superlatives to do the place justice. In most instances I’ll just let the photos do the talking, but here goes anyhow.

In a couple of texts and Facebook posts I’ve made over the past week, I’ve described the region as “shockingly beautiful”. I was, and to this day remain, astonished by the beauty of the place. From the stark rolling granite hills, down through the scrub and shrubs to come out straight out onto pure white beaches, made from sand like which I’ve never known before. The sand is so fine, salt like in appearance, that as you walk on it, it literally squeaks under your feet.

And then, if you don’t think the place could get any more enchanting or breathtaking, a couple of local small roos bounce pass non-chalantly, as if inserting a random Australian landscape cliche. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought I was stuck in a Tourism Australia ad.

The campgrounds have recently had a significant overhaul with a new area opened up to double the capacity. They are marshalled by “hosts”, volunteers who live on the grounds for a month at a time who take the payments and clean the dunnies in lieu of fees… Geez… tough gig. The Rangers patrol the areas also, and maintain the rubbish bins and other amenities.

We found the grounds to be excellent in quality and more than acceptable. We were “officially” told to boil the groundwater before using it, but “off the record” were assured that it was fine to drink. For anyone wondering, we spent the week drinking it without any issue whatsoever.

Our site was large and easily accommodated the Big Green Lizard, it’s awning (when rolled out) and the Rock Truck without any issues. Each site was isolated from the neighbouring sites as well, giving you a nice little sense of isolation without making you feel alone. If that makes sense?

I’m probably going to get sick of recommending places that people MUST go to (remember Lincoln NP anyone?) but this is a non-negotiable. The fact that this region is so far away from most, so difficult to get to means that the reward for effort needs to be great. The reward for getting to Lucky Bay is so great, it’d be worth travelling twice the distance, with triple the amount of kids in the back at four times the cost and you’d still be ahead.

It is simply “shockingly beautiful”.