Day 9 – Last day at Orleans Bay Esperance
Everyone was heading back to the daily grind today (except us!). We helped pack the Patrol and Prado, and saw them out of the Caravan Park. We didn’t have much planned, except for tidying up the inside of the car, getting some washing done and just generally lazing around. The school kids were due to leave too, and we watched for a good 20 minutes whilst several people attempted to pack one of the ‘speedy up’ tents away into its back. These spring up as soon as you pull them out of the bag, and need to be folded up in a very specific way to get them back into the bag.
At one point, a teacher bent the tent so far it made an awful cracking noise! Eventually everyone gave up, and the tent was thrown into the bus whole, outside of its bag! The quick up tents are great (toilet/shower tents and sun shades) if you are familiar with how they go back into the bag, but if you aren’t, be prepared for a very frustrating experience! The washing facilities at the Duke of Orleans Caravan Park are good, and it was very obvious Kangaroos were common at night on the grassed area by the number of droppings!
I’d noticed my wetsuit was beginning to smell a bit, having not been washed or dried properly for quite some time, so I took it to the laundry and rinsed it out, then hung the two pieces over the spare tyres to dry. I also had a good look over the 80 series, to make sure everything looked mechanically ok. I noticed the front roofrack mount had come loose, and tightened it up a bit. One of the screws had come loose holding the bottom of the intercooler in place, but it had obviously flogged the hole out as I replaced the screw before coming down. Not to worry; it wasn’t going anywhere anyway!
After grabbing our washing off the line and beginning to pack parts of the camp away, we headed down to little Wharton Beach, with the idea of doing the 45 minute walk. I soon found that a 4WD track went most of the way, and went back for the car. We walked along the last part of the track, and came back via the rocks on the coast (which was a bit difficult at the end!).
We had been told the sunset was good on Victoria Harbor, so parked the car to watch the sun go down. We could see an island in the distance, roughly a km out that was getting absolutely smashed by waves. The waves spray was easily hitting 3 – 4 times the height of the island; I reckon they would have been around 10 – 20 metres tall.
The sunset was a bit of a flop, so we headed back to camp, starving and cold. After a nice dinner of lamb chops and mash potato/pumkin/sweet potato, cleaned the dishes up and packed a bit more away. The plan was to get up at 6AM and head straight to Lucky Bay after packing up.
