Esperance

We left Kalgoorlie Monday morning, 8/4, to head down to Esperance. Tim and I have swapped jobs. He is head cook and I am the teacher. Tim gets the tea ready before we leave in the morning and pops it in our fantastic thermo pot ( every house, shed, barn, garden needs one of these) which sits in the back of the car all day then when we pull up for tea out comes the thermo pot, the food is all cooked and at the right temperature for the whole family! I say it again it is fantastic.
I sit in the back and commence the day in the class room ( car).
We stopped at Norseman for lunch at the playground next to the Olympic size swimming pool which I, Heidi, nearly jumped in clothes and all, but realised they were pumping out all the water. It didn't take long for our kids to see this and being a warm day they promised they would just put their feet in!

Does that look like "just feet"?

Here we are with the horse Norseman and Ethan got the smelly end! The town was named after this horse as it poured at the ground until it dug up a huge gold nugget.
As we kept  driving the country changed with more water and there was paddocks full of Black Angus cows, in green paddocks! After summer! We were a bit late to get to our camping site at Lucky Bay so we spent 2 nights in Esperance caravan park near Pink Lake, which was cheaper than Kalgoorlie! Tuesday we went out to Twilight Cove which was meant to be the best beach in Australia in 2006.

The sand is white and squeaks under you feet. Tim swam out to the rocks you can see. The kids went walking in the sand hills next to the beach with Tim and they found a reasonably large lizard which Tim encouraged Ethan to pick up, pulling out from under a rock. Ethan looks up to his Dad and did as he said and the lizard promptly turned around and bit his finger , drawing blood and needing a band aid. Now this was the beach that made Tim and I a bit puzzled. Nobody was wearing rash tops. Nobody was applying sunburn cream. Most were in skimpy swimwear and white. Even older people in the sun for hours. We all had long rash tops and layered with cream.
We then went into the beach at Esperance which had a pontoon that you could swim to from the jetty like Venus Bay, but the pontoon had a slippery dip on it! Brilliant idea. While we were there enjoying that Sammy the local seal came and had a look at us.
Wednesday we moved out to Lucky Bay camp grounds in the National Park. With these places they don't save you a spot you just have to get there early enough and hope someone has left. This has been our cheapest place to stay at $26 a night apart from the free places. By this time we are getting use to the silences after we say 2 adults and 6 kids. I think they are waiting for us to say "only joking" but instead there is silence and we wait for them to add up the price. These last 2 places have felt sorry for us having to pay for all the kids so have given us a discount. As we got all set up a goanna strolled calmly past Baylee's open swag so he remembered from then on to keep his swag done up unless he wanted to sleep with these warm blooded animals.

There was a lot of different animals there and this on Manning's arm was a beetle that Manning called Fredy. Whenever Fredy was lost another Fredy would appear.

This is the incredibly quiet kangaroos that would come and clean our mat. One even ate a chicken bone! They pulled my fruit off the table, 4 of them, and got an apple each!
The beach at Lucky Bay was also white and squeaky and the first morning I went for a run around the bay, bare foot, but nearly got blisters as it was very rough on my feet.

The view as we hiked from Lucky Bay to Thistle Cove

Lucky Bay. Our caravan is one of those white dots in the distance.Ethan, Tim, Zane and Manning with Kimberly behind Tim.

This is what we saw after 1 hour of climbing up Frenchman's Peak! Very specky. Quite a bit of it was on hands and knees and even Manning made it! It was 260m up with a naturally hollowed out bridge/cave at the top.
Kids snorkeled, body boarded,and spearfished a lot at Lucky Bay .Again everyone in skimpy swimwear so we decided to join them and leave the rash tops off and no sunburn cream! Amazing! The kangaroos would casually hop along the beach, check out peoples bags.  One day 5 dolphins came in to feed in the bay and we saw them. We grabbed the camera and headed toward them hoping they would be inquisitive and come and check us out.They did and the kids got to see them under water within 2m. We quickly took a photo forgetting to turn the flash off and promptly scared them away! We know for next time!
Our solar panels started to struggle to keep up when the weekend came and some overcast whether hit the bay. Then Saturday night the blackout hit. No lights, nothing in the caravan. The battery had finally died. So Monday we went and bought a new one which is doing a great job.
Sunday we went to church at Esperance AOG. Enjoyed the music and they had a great big shed for the older kids group which is a great idea. You can do anything in a shed. We are really getting an idea for how we need to make it easy for travellers to find a church if they want to.
We packed up and left Lucky Bay Tuesday, saying goodbye to our retired friends! One couple there we had met on the Nullabor! They have accepted us as one of them!