i needed to add this distinction, after all we’ve been travelling the ‘south coast’ for more than two months now. and while every part was beautiful, wild and special the western australian south coast is really picture postcard tropical island stunning.
lush green bush, snow-white sandy beaches and turquoise sea. it is amazing that first explorers like pieter nuyts (who travelled this part of the coast all the way to ceduna in 1640 by sea) or edward eyre (who did the reverse trip on land 200 years later) found it to be barren and, in eyre’s words, the stuff of nightmares.
i do get eyre’s point of view, the poor man hardly survived his trip across the nullarbor, no wonder he had little nice to say. i also assume early explorers were not really after picturesque beaches, they wanted to establish trading empires (nuyts) or find farmland.
there is quite a bit of that between esperance (which is named after the ship of a french explorer; what a truly multicultural part of the country) and bremer bay (named after the english captain of the ship hms tamar), the 400 km trip was not overly exciting but fortunately not as long as the gps predicted.
bremer bay is known for its beautiful countryside, it’s fishing and the bremer canyon. to visit that one needs an oceangoing boat (not hiking boots) and – to have a closer look – serious diving gear. the bremer canyon is a deep sea canyon 70 km off-shore that attracts some apex predators – shark and orcas – during the summer months, most likely due to undersea currents that fill it with nutrients and attract food for the big hunters.
we would have loved to see the orcas (the orca is of course my patronus) but unfortunately we arrived a bit late in the season and didn’t let the orcas know in advance … so they are gone. and for a price tag of $400 and the prospect of being on a boat off-shore for a stomach-churning 8 hours … i am not sure we would want to try. maybe next time.
unfortunately bremer bay has not been as welcoming as we’d hoped; the weather is not bad but a bit bleak and cold. no worries, that gives us time to study, plan the next part of our trip and organise the car service and a few other minor maintenance jobs in perth.
in the meantime we enjoy the south coast in all its beauty. albany is next.