Back to the Coast at Cape Le Grand National Park
It was starting to heat up again after a few cooler days in the goldfields of WA, and we thought Christmas & New Year holidaymakers may have started to clear out, so it was back to the coast for us via Esperance to Cape Le Grand National Park.
Weâd been looking forward to Cape Le Grand after hearing about the gorgeous white-sand beaches and crystal clear blue water (can something really be crystal clear if itâs blue?). The most popular campground is at Lucky Bay, which until November was first come, first serve (or first in, best dressed as the Aussies say). In November it shifted to an online booking system, and as such was completely and utterly packed out for weeks around the popular Dec/Jan holiday period.
Lucky (see what I did there) for us, thereâs also a 4wd campground on the beach on the other side of the park, at Dunnâs Rocks. We pulled up and chose a spot halfway down the beach – paradise.
We were especially looking forward to cooler coastal temperatures and some beach time, because the next leg of our journey would be to cross the Nullarbor, which weâll cover in the next blog post, but essentially represents 1100km of fairly straight, paved highway crossing from Western Australia into South Australia. Itâd be a few days of a lot of driving and not much else. So, we happily settled in for a couple of days of beach camping, relaxing, and exploring.
Our first order of business was a nice long walk along the beach – where we spotted a poor dead washed-up jellyfish. There were a few of these dotted here and there. Iâm not sure what type of jellyfish these are but theyâre almost certainly not the kind that is harmful to humans, since we heard a report from some swimmers that there were heaps of them in the water too (also dead – but we opted not to swim all the same).
The next day, while I chilled out and read my book in the tent, Nick went on an exploration mission to get to the top of one of the huge, white sand dunes we could see in the distance.
As you can tell, our lives are super busy, hectic and stressful at the moment.
The next day we wanted to explore the park a bit. Our first stop was Lucky Bay (that super busy campground I mentioned at the start of the blog post). Lucky Bay is pretty famous for the local kangaroo population, which spends a lot of time on the beach! Itâs a pretty cool and popular photo op, which of course we took advantage of, along with the rest of our fellow tourists.
The beach was great for driving at Lucky Bay, with hard-packed sand and lots of room for vehicles above the high tide mark, but didnât look awesome for swimming while we were there – the tide was out and there was heaps of seaweed on the beach – so we continued on to a local recommendation, Hellfire Bay. With a name like that, youâd think it wouldnât be a very nice place, but we were greeted with a beautiful, long, quiet beach, where we spent the afternoon swimming (well, bobbing and wave-jumping) and sunning.
On our way out of the park, we spotted the famous and aptly-named âFrenchmanâs Peakâ – might be a nice hike if you had the time!
That night we stayed in a tiny town called Condingup that wasnât much more than a free campground, community hall, and a pub doing triple duty as a general store and post office. We read on WikiCamps that the pub food was awesome,  and any time we camp for free in a town we make sure to support a local business, so went to check it out. We love these small town friendly pubs, and shared a delicious meal and bottle of wine while watching two local artists perform.
Condingup was a convenient place for us to embark on another 4wd track, the Balladonia Track, which is a shortcut inland between Esperance (on the coast) and Balladonia (on the Nullarbor). This shortcut would save us about 200km, plus had the added bonus of no backtracking over a road weâd already driven (we hate backtracking!).
Unfortunately, we checked track conditions the morning after our lovely evening in Condingup, and the track had been closed due to a bush fire. Same thing that happened to us with the Holland Track! Wow. This summer is no joke in Australia (Iâm writing this post from Tasmania, where there are a ton of active bushfires this month).
So, in the interest of our own safety, it was back through Esperance to Norseman for us, along the bitumen the long way, and embarking on the trek to South Australia along the Nullarbor!
