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Esperance - Friday 12th December 2008
Car Kilometres: 189,585
Distance Travelled: 765 km
Total Distance Travelled: 21,334km
Although it's only a couple of weeks until Christmas, we've not yet really gotten into the festive spirit - the journey has been far too absorbing to think of anything else but where we will next lay our heads, what we're going to eat, and whether the weather will be kind to us.
As we drive out of the Nullarbor region, we notice that the surrounding landscape and vegetation gets noticeably more lush, and we are the proud owners of a certificate each confirming that we have completed the marathon drive - the tourist office lady in Norseman signed them personally!
We pass through Albany without so much as a by-your-leave, and swing into Esperance, home to a ridiculous proportion of Australia's total of 7,000 beaches, all of which are sublimely white sanded, turquoise sparkling watered, and pretty much deserted.
After setting up camp, we venture into town to check out the locale, and have a slow amble up the pier, chatting to a few fishermen who are after a bit of fresh squid for tea. There is a bronze statue of Sammy the Seal at the start of the jetty, and we are lucky to get a command performance from Sammy himself (or one of his relatives), who swims up and down for half an hour or so, competing with the seagulls for spare bits of the day's catch.
After sharing a tub of chips and gravy from a cheery seafront mobile snack vendor, we drive down to the port to check out the huge ships and watch the giant moon rise - apparently it's a phenomenon the world over for the next few days, as the moon is really close to the earth.
The following day, after a misunderstanding about how many nights we want to stay at the campsite leads to us uprooting and dragging the tent twenty metres or so to next-door-but-one to our current pitch, we meander around the various bluffs, beaches and observation points in the vicinity. We are hoping for a view of some kangaroos on the beach, but we're unlucky; and the famed pink lake proves to not really be all that pink (mostly blue). However, we look out over/walk on/drive past/admire more of the aforementioned sparkling beaches with squeaky white sand than we imagined was possible - with the result that we've become almost blasé about them by the end of the afternoon.
We celebrate it being nearly Christmas with another takeaway tonight: this time it's a pizza, eaten in the car on the sea front. We feel a bit guilty about all the junk food, but promise ourselves that we'll up the salad and fruit intake massively once we get back to Perth and have a fridge again!
The following morning, it's time to move onwards and westwards - via more impossibly pretty beaches, a trot around the Sunday market, a spooky walk through a silent wind farm, and with an interesting bonding experience with a family of magpies over some Weetabix at breakfast.
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