Day 14

Woke up listing to frogs riding their motorbikes again, and drizzle started falling again just after breakfast.  Weather forecast was for "clearing showers", though it didn't specify when the showers would clear.

The plan for today was to check out everything in the National Park, except for the Coastal Walking track - that's for fit people who walk places!  The drizzle/rain persisted all morning and didn't make things pleasant.  We could see that the scenery would look good in normal daylight, but today it just looked bland with the overcast skies.  Walking up Frenchman's Peak was pointless because it was up in the clouds half the time.

We checked out Hellfire Bay, Thistle Cove & Whistling Rock, Lucky Bay and Rossiter Bay.  Frenchman's Peak wasn't really worth exploring because the view would be pretty unrewarding on a drizzly overcast day like today.

Hellfire bay had a pristine steep beach and the surf, albeit small, was clear of seaweed and I remarked to Morgs that it looked like a good beach for fishing.

Thistle Cove involved a bit of a walk to get down to it and wasn't all that exciting.  We found Whistling Rock quite interesting because as you walk towards the rock you can hear an amplified reflection of the roaring ocean, which is about 300m away.  The curved shape of the rock helps focus the sound reflections from a particular direction, which reminded us of the two dishes set up in the gardens at the Parks Radio Telescope in NSW.  We tested it out by speaking a few sentences at normal face-to-face volume and we could work out what the other was saying, despite standing 40m apart with a large bush between us.

Morgs had earlier been feeling a bit bored due to a lack of mental stimulation lately in the trip.  The Whistling Rock perked up her interest with it's unique and natural scientific talent, though I'm completely bewildered by the fact that there is no mention anywhere in the park about this rock, the way it reflects and focuses sound waves, and how it works.  There was no signs at the site and no information in the park notes at the camps.  Most people would probably walk straight past without realising or thinking twice about why the ocean sounded so much louder when standing in a particular spot.

We continued on to Lucky Bay and the drizzle continued to fall.  We drove along the beach (just past high tide) to the lookout on the west side of Mississippi Point.  We found a couple of Sooty Oyster catchers out scrounging on the beach.  When we got to the end of the beach Morgs stayed dry in the car to make sure it didn't get washed out to sea (no chance!) while I ran up the stairs to the lookout to snap a long panorama of the bays. The bays looked fairly clear and the beaches were white, but the grey skies and drizzle really didn't make things look great.

Next visit was Rossiter Bay, which was pretty underwhelming compared to the other beaches; it was carpeted in huge piles of seaweed.  This is supposed to be a drivable beach in & out of the park, which I had been considering taking from Orleans Bay until I decided to wash the car in Esperance instead.  Bloody glad I didn't persist with driving on this beach.That was about all there was to see in the park from the car, and it was only morning tea time! 

We headed back to camp close to midday where I planned to spend some time fishing on the beach behind our campsite and Morgs was going to relax reading her Kindle.  I also took the opportunity to attempt to repair the leak in my airbed.  Up until now I had been sleeping on one of our 2cm thick self inflatable mattresses that we brought for insulation from the cold air beds; Morgs had the good mattress because she's a sook.

It seemed like the rain had stopped for good by now, but the grey skies would continue for some time to come. So I found a patch of beach where there was no seaweed and set myself up to stay there a few hours.  On my second cast I caught a fish!  Something small, about 15-20cm length in total, but I was never intending to keep anything I caught.  I popped out the hook and he caught the next wave back out to the ocean.

Some guys pulled up in a landcruiser ute to mention that they saw a whale and it's calf about 3km back, heading this way about 150m off shore.  I kept an eye out for them the whole 2 hours I was out fishing, but never saw them.  I also never felt any more bites on the line, but I didn't really care.

Late in the afternoon, on the western horizon, the end of the cloud bank could be seen heading our way, which meant it would be great sky & weather conditions for a brilliant sunset photo.  An hour or so later a fellow camper came over to say that a whale was just off the beach and heading south!  How about that? Whale and sunset photos at the same time!!  It turned out it was a mother and her calf - probably the same pair the guys in the Landcruiser saw. 

I tried my best to get a whale & sunset photo but she was heading south too quickly for the sun to set and they didn't quite line up perfectly, but I still got some nice shots.  It feels much more special to have seen the whales off the coast without having paid for the privilege.  Seeing the whales at the Head of the Bight at this time of year is akin to going fishing at the trout farm; seeing them off the coast near Esperance at this time of year is a good chance, but no certainty.  Still, it was a nice rewarding end to what started out as a rather shitty day.

We noticed the number of campers in the park suddenly increased late in the afternoon/evening too, then we figured out it was Friday evening and they were most likely all locals who had come down for a camp after knocking off work.  How good would it be being able to knock off work on a Friday arvo, pack the car and drive an hour/90 minutes down the beach to a National Park to camp a couple of nights, and maybe catch a glimpse of a couple of whales, eh?  Lucky people.

Thankfully our neighbour frogs stopped racing their motorbikes when it was time to go to sleep.  Scuttles McCrab didn't return either.  My airbed was still inflated too, so that was a good sign.