It rained all night last night. We had to pack up in the rain, lucky Will was keeping himself amused in the car playing. Otherwise he would’ve been filthy from the mud. We were off at about 8.30am and had a slow drive to Esperance due to the conditions. We passed the longest train we’ve ever seen – it had a total of 4 engines and felt like we were passing it for a few minutes. William was upset when it ended. Luckily we saw a couple more along the way. It was very cold today, we had all the windows up and Kelley & Will slept most the way. We arrived into Esperance at about 11.30am and quickly settled into the Esperance Seafront Caravan Park. We had to set up in the rain, this time William had fun running around getting wet. It’s nice to finally have some grass. We unhooked the car from the camper trailer for the first time, due to our treg hitch pin being bent, and headed into town for some supplies. We tried a camping shop and 4x4 shop for a new treg hitch pin, but were unsuccessful. Kelley then dragged the boys to Woolies and Target.
We had been promising William after going shopping we were going fishing. He couldn’t make up his mind if he wanted to catch a fish or a shark. We dropped our shopping back at the caravan park and got all our fishing stuff ready. The guys at the bait shop told us we would most likely catch heron or squid from the jetty. We headed down to the Jetty with Steven & Ben, while David fixed the uni joint in Stevens car, apparently is had become quite noisy. At the Jetty, looking out over the ocean there were a few container ships and islands. William was happy to see the boats. We started walking down the jetty and were surprised to see a massive Sea Lion in the water. William naturally thought it was a shark. He was very friendly and smart, as he stayed in the one spot the whole time we were there – underneath the fish cleaning station, hoping for a feed. Another smaller Sea Lion was also floating around, but she never came close to the Jetty. It was amazing to see them in the wild. We settled in with the fishing and having to keep a firm grip on William as the Jetty wasn’t fenced down one side. Ben was the first to catch a little heron. He was very proud. Not long after William caught a small heron too. But then Kelley caught a big heron. She was very proud. We didn’t think at the time to feed it to the Sea Lion. William quickly lost interest shortly after and it was very windy and cold so we didn’t catch anything else and headed back to camp.
We decided that since we were in a fishing town we would go out for fish for dinner and settled into the Pier Hotel. It was nice for us to not have to cook. Neil was also pleasantly surprised that they didn’t have schooners at the pub so he had to get a Pint. Well, 2 pints actually. We are now sitting in the camper and the wind is blowing a gale. Unsure of our final destination tomorrow, we will be heading towards Ravensthorpe so will see how far we get after that. We will hopefully be in Perth by Wednesday.