FriendlyBrooks

It was great going back and just as good 42 years later

Lance Brooks, Esperance lover, March 2026

I awoke early on Tuesday 17th March to a beautiful rural view and I was excited ☺️. Today I would finally visit Esperance and its beautiful beaches, a place Lance promised to take me when we first met 42 years ago. I was a little apprehensive – would it live up to the expectation.

We packed up from the HipCamp and left quickly, for us although we were the last group to depart. First stop was the town of Esperance where we did some shopping and had a coffee. The main street in town is quite cute and had the feeling of somewhere like Yamba. Then I had banking problem number 1 of the trip. I had wanted to get some cash out, as it’s something that’s required at a lot of places. I first visited the Westpac terminal but Westpac isn’t my bank and it declined my card. I then went to CBA and successfully withdrew the cash. Only 5 minutes later I received an alert from the bank that there was suspicious activity on my card and they had blocked it. The chat function on the banking app worked pretty well and 10 minutes later the card was unblocked. Meanwhile we had a quick drive along the waterfront of Esperance which wasn’t as impressive as I thought it would be. But all sorted, we could head off to Cape Le Grand with confidence.

Driving out to Lucky Bay, I hoped that Lance wouldn’t be disappointed as it was bound to be more crowded than when he visited in 1980. It was definitely very crowded – day carpark full, campground full and there must have been 50 cars on the beach. But that didn’t take away from the incredible beauty of the place. I once read a novel where the main character had wanted to take a trip along the road less travelled but then realised the reason why places are popular is because they are amazing. This is the case with Lucky Bay.

There were signs all along the road in saying that the campground was fully booked and not to proceed without a booking. Incredibly I had managed to snag a 2 night booking just a week before. These bookings are like hens teeth so I was pretty proud of myself for persevering with the legendary WA Parks site to get this. The campground includes a huge camp kitchen and hot showers. Anyhoo, suffice to say we were definitely not disappointed. Once we set up we went to the beach and decided to walk the length of the beach. At the Eastern end are some amazing rocks, pretty little bays, a lookout and the Matthew Flinders plaque, placed on a gigantic boulder in 1804.. We explored here for an hour or 2 and walked back along the beach into the sunset.

Lance woke at the crack of dawn and walked to the end of the beach and back before I got out of bed. He suggested that we take the car down onto the beach and we would take lunch and dinner and stay there all day.  It was fun driving up to the end of the beach (and saving the 5km walk). We found a spot a little away from others, although in truth we were not alone. We had a lovely day reading, swimming, eating, fishing, (no fish) playing Finska and generally relaxing. It was a perfect day! We finished it by driving up to Whistle rock at Thistle Cove to catch the last of the sunset.

After spending 2 nights in this fantastic campground it was time to move on. We packed up and left about 11am (an hour later than we should have). We decided to drive to all the other beaches in the area and then head further east to Cape Arid for the night. We first drove the car and camper trailer on the beach just for fun and then drove 6km down a corrugated gravel road to Rossiter Beach. I had read that this trip wasn’t worth it but I disagree. The beach was just as stunning and we were completely alone.

Next stop was back to Thistle Cove for a swim at the beach. It was stunning.

On we went, stopping briefly at Frenchman’s Peak which we didn’t climb on account of it being too hot, and then went to Hellfire Bay. This might be the most beautiful and most popular of all the beaches in this area. Whilst walking along the beach we saw a huge pod of dolphins, probably about 20.

It was now after 3 and we had an hour and a half drive to get to the campground at Cape Arid so we decided to move on After about 40km or so we passed by a town that advertised a show on Saturday, 2 days forth. I commented that maybe we should have stopped for diesel as we were now in the habit of topping up whenever we could. Lance did a clever U-turn and we drove into Condingup and filled up. And then trouble struck again! The battery was completely flattened again,! We had just started using the reversing camera again and boom it sucked the battery dry.  Looks like we wouldn’t be going far tonight. We asked the girl in the store for help and she suggested calling Tony, he can fix anything. So out comes Tony and gets us started.  He suggested that we take the car for a drive to Orleans Bay, about 45 minutes away, have a look without turning the engine off and drive back then camp for the night at the back of the tavern and if we still had problems in the morning call him again. It turns out that this was a perfect solution. We drove to Orleans Bay and found a beach that lots of people were driving on so we went down too and watched a truly magnificent sunset across the water. We then drove back and ate dinner in the tavern before camping along with several others outside. I tell you if this is what bad luck brings then I can’t even imagine what good luck looks like.

Of course the car started easily the next morning so we could be on our way quickly but bad luck was to hit again with banking disaster number 2. I am ashamed to say I was scamned by clicking on a link and putting in my credit card details. It was only after it didn’t go through I realised the email was fake (I could kick myself because I have sat through hours of security training so I really should know better). Luckily I realised what I had done and called the bank quickly. No money had been taken out but we still had to change all our cards and I had to completely reload my bank app and reset everything. Hats off though to the CBA fraud representative. She was truly incredible. It could have been a disaster but in the end it was just a minor setback that was resolved in under an hour. I will give CBA top scores on the CSat survey if they ask me.

After a longer than anticipated but very pleasant stop in Condingup we finally went to Cape Arid. Thomas River campground is another fabulous setup taking about 16 vehicles. It was about half full. The beach here is wilder and not as popular as Lucky Bay. We spent the afternoon driving down onto the beach and setting up in the corner where we could swim and Lance could fish. And guess what – he caught one. The first line caught fish of the trip. Not enough for a whole dinner, but good enough for a pre-dinner snack. It was delicious if bony.

We were able to stay at the campground until the afternoon so we spent the morning back at the beach and then drove to Dolphin Cove which we walked down to over spectacular boulder rocks to another beach with turquoise water. we followed an emu down the road on the way out.

Once on the road we headed back to Condingup for the show. It was a pretty small affair but they had a chaff tossing contest and a band that played sea shanties. Thanks to Jack and Cassie I knew quite a few of the songs.

After an hour we had had enough shanting and drove back to the Pink Lake caravan Park in Esperance. We had specifically booked here so we could do our washing, and for that alone it was worth it. It also had a pretty amazing camp kitchen that had ovens, a microwave and toasters so we had one of our favourite scratch meals of sardines on toast while we waited for 3 loads of washing to dry.  This caravan park was huge with over 100 sites but by 10pm the place was dead quiet. We slept well and woke up early to leave just after 7am to first do some shopping, then have breakfast and then go to Mass.  The community at Esperance Catholic church was very strong and they had a great morning tea which we stayed for and chatted with some of the locals.

After Mass we drove along the Esperance Great Ocean Drive, stopping at a few lookouts and then swimming at the Instagram worthy Twilight Beach.  This is yet another stunning beach in a gaggle of stunning beaches. It also has an impressive life-saving club which Lance appreciated. It was a fitting finish to our time in Esperance.