Hi all

Now Esperance had a multitude of things for us to see, and we intended to see every last one of them. In one day. Things started badly when we got up late and missed our coffee appointment with Andy and Kimbers, but we promised we’d be up to meet them in Kalgoorlie the following day. No probs.

So our first stop was the Esperance Aquarium. This was started as a hobby by a couple and is now one of the highlights of the town. With good reason. Its still run by the same couple and they have as many as a dozen tanks each representing local habitats, as well as other habitats from further afield. And boy, was it an education. First of all, particularly for Kate, let’s talk about Clown Fish. Cute and loveable they may be, but they are also a bit weird. For instance they’re all born male. All of them. They then change sex as required. The biggest fish in the school is, surprisingly, a female. The second biggest is the alpha male. When the female dies, the alpha male turns into a female, and the next biggest becomes the alpha male. So eventually Nemo will become Naomi. Bless.

The other favourite in the place was the octopus. This one was stunning. And boy did she like showing off. She’d come up to the glass have a look at us and then change colours just to impress us. Not just slightly either. I mean completely change colour from red to orange, green to purple. Stunning. Now you’ll notice I used the words ‘have look at us’ and this is exactly what they do. They have superb eyesight, if you take a dead one’s eye you can read a newspaper through it, through the glass of a tank. So I used the words advisedly. Even more surprising is that they are, to an extent, amphibious. Yep. They can survive for as long as an hour outside water. And they eat on average 60 - 80 per cent of their own body weight in lobster every day. They are also highly intelligent and some people consider them to be the cleverest creature in the sea. All this comes together in one of the best stories I’ve heard in a while.

The owner and our guide for the day told us this story so whether or not its an urban myth I don’t know. But here goes. There’s a marine laboratory not far up the coast and they were having a serious problem with theft. They had a tank of lobsters they were studying, but they kept going missing. Now it was getting close to Christmas so they figured that the staff might be helping themselves to save spending some cash on Christmas dinner. So they secretly installed a surveillance camera to catch the culprit in the act. They got slightly more than they bargained for. See, they also had an octopus. And this octopus could see the lobsters from its own tank. That’s through two lots of glass and across a distance of maybe thirty feet. So, this octopus was waiting til no-one was around, pushing up the lid on its tank, climbing down, slithering across to the lobster tank, climbing up and in, taking a lobster and then heading back to its own tank, where it would consume the thing, and, get this, bury the remains. The perfect crime. And it would’ve worked if it wasn’t for you meddling kids...

Amazing as the aquarium was, it had touch pools with rays in it and a baby turtle that tried to eat everyone’s fingers, eventually we had to leave and headed on to the ‘Tourist Village’. Which was s***e. Not so much a tourist village as a bunch of original buildings that had been turned into shops. One of which was an Indigenous Art Gallery. Hmmmm. Foregoing the chance of paying $600 for ten thousand dots we headed on to the Municipal Museum.

Which was excellent. It was like a huge historical jumble sale. Just a massive warehouse full of town related stuff and stories that only local people could possibly care about. Oh yeah, and me and Mand. A boat that couldn’t be salvaged despite several attempts over the years, wedding dresses, photo albums (I always get an eerie feeling looking at old photos - I love it), mock ups of old shops, an original train, toys, farm implements, jewellery and loads more. All just kind of thrown together with no discernible organisation. At one point Mand came over looking perplexed. ‘They’ve got sealing wax over there’ she says with a troubled frown. ‘Yeah, and?’ ‘What’s it for?’ ‘It’s for sealing letters, you know, in the old days. Why? You must have heard of it before. The walrus in Alice in Wonderland and all that’ ‘Course I’ve heard of it....but I thought it was for fixing cracks in the ceiling’. I swear to God I thought my sides would actually split.

They also had pieces of Skylab there. Skylab was America’s first manned space station and it re-entered the atmosphere over Western Australia in 1971 and crash landed. There are pieces of it in just about every museum for miles around, but Esperance has loads of it. Rumour has it that the Western Australian Government fined NASA $200 for littering...

But that was it for the museum, so we headed on to something called a ‘9 x 5 Art Exhibition’. This is a bunch of works painted on 9 x 5 inch boards by local and national artists that are auctioned off for charity. And to be honest that’s the only reason you’d buy any of it. Pants. And they were expected to raise $200 - $300 each. Not on my watch sunshine. The reason the boards were 9 x 5 is because people used to paint on the lids of old cigar boxes which were 9 x 5. Now you know...

Last on the list for the day was a place called Mermaid Leather. Mermaid Leather is a place that makes things you’d normally make out of leather. Belts, shoes, clothes, bags, purses. Except they make them out of fish skins. How f***ing mad is that? It all started when two guys got chatting at a barbecue. One was a fisherman and wondered how he could make extra money from his fish skins, and whether or not they could be used like leather. The other guy was a tanner. Say no more. Before you could say Robert’s your Auntie’s live in lover Mermaid Leather was born. Now here’s a thing. Fish skins after they’ve been tanned are actually tougher than leather (Does anyone else remember that Run DMC film by the same name? I can’t find anyone else who’s ever heard of it. I’m beginning to think I’m delusional). One guy sewed patches onto his jeans and the jeans wore out before the patches did. And the patterns of the scales are beautiful. And as the skins dry white, they can be dyed any colour at all. Superb. For my part, I took a great Schadenfreude style delight in watching the DVD they had playing on a loop. It starts with the owners being interviewed not long after they opened (a fair few years ago now) and they were talking about how exciting it was and forth. Then there’s another interview with them looking like they’ve changed the world and they’re talking about going global and how they’re striking up deals in the US and Japan and how they have interested parties in Europe. The next interview see them slightly less fervent as they talk about how they might have the possibility of some contracts from elsewhere in Australia. The final one shows them as a kind of novelty bit at the end of the news. No mention of international mega deals anywhere. Call me cruel, but I laughed my head off. It’d been a long day.

Now when we got back to the campsite and we had every intention of heading to bed and leaving in the morning for Kalgoorlie via the Great Ocean Drive (not to be confused with the Great Ocean Road near Melbourne) which lies around Esperance. However we got chatting to the couple with the kids from Albany who were on a month’s sabbatical from their jobs and were travelling. Now she turned out to be an accountant recruiter for some firm that Deloittes had just taken over, just outside Melbourne. He looked like a gangster. Or possibly a boxer. Clean shaven head, gold earrings, and a face like an extra from the Godfather. Now this I thought, looks like a guy who could sort us out with some weed. Obviously then, he turned out to be a copper. And not just any copper, but a commander. As in in charge of an entire police force. There’s just no telling with some people. Needless to say my question remained unasked. But they did tell us about the beaches up the road at Cape Le Grande. These beaches they assured us were the finest beaches in Australia. Better than the Maldives. Better than anywhere else in the world possibly. And who were we to argue. So we decided to stay an extra day.

Now here’s something else. They were travelling with their kids. Three of them. The oldest was maybe ten, the youngest about five and the third somewhere in between. Knowing that in England they are talking about fining parents for taking their kids on holiday during term time, I asked what the crack was over here. They said the school’s attitude was one of ‘well they’ll be learning about life and stuff while they’re travelling with you so it’s fine with us. There’ll be plenty of time for them to catch up when they get back’. As it happens, the parents took some activity books with them for the kids to do just so they wouldn’t miss too much. And the kids insisted on doing them. In fact, they couldn’t wait to get back to school cos they were missing their friends and their routine. Bizarre. I’m not saying this is typical of kids in Australia or typical of the attitude of parents and schools but wouldn’t it be nice if it was this easy in England? In fact, all the campsites we’ve stayed on have had kids running around on them. I think I like it. But on the other hand I hope I never have another day like the one at Jewel Cave...

At some point along the way, Tony phoned (after texting me to ask what my number was - I swear to God that bloke has more ‘moments’ than I do) and I left Mand chatting to them while I caught up on all the gossip from home. While I was gone the copper and his wife cooked up oysters with Worcestershire sauce and bacon on which they shared with Mand, and when we’d all finished me and Mand headed off to bed to watch a DVD on the computer and promptly fell asleep before it was even half over. Well, as I said earlier, it’d been a long day.

Next morning and we were up pretty early and off to Cape Le Grande, where we spent a fantastic day strolling on the beaches there in blazing sunshine. And the beaches were as beautiful as the copper had promised. Soft, soft, white sand, crystal clear blue waters and nobody about. It was like something out of an advert for a holiday. Superb. We dicked around for a while at Cape Le Grande, Hellfire Bay, Lucky Bay and Thistle Cove (me showing Mand some ‘fantastic’ kung fu moves, photographing our footprints, writing ‘How’s Work?’ in huge letters in the untouched sand to send in an email to everyone) and finished off at a place called Whistling Rocks.

I was hugely disappointed in Whistling Rocks for three reasons. Firstly the f***in things didn’t whistle. They didn’t even hum. Secondly, I stopped to have a quick piss while Mand stood lookout. As I was finishing, I turned to see Mand had wondered off and in her place was a twelve year old boy staring at me in total shock and horror. I stuffed my dinkle away lightning fast and ended up peeing all over the front of my shorts and somehow down my both legs. Not impressed. Thirdly, there was a sign telling us to beware of the huge decaying whale carcass that was laying on the beach. But there wasn’t one. Some stupid greenies must’ve come and cleaned it away. What was there though was the twelve year old kid complete with his family (including grandparents). With Mand shouting ‘Look he’s peed his pants’ to them and them looking at me like I was the most evil and disgusting creature they’d ever encountered (an incontinent, near naked flasher must come pretty close I suppose) I decided it was time for us to leave. Quickly. Before they called the cops. Back at the campsite we had just enough energy left for dinner and a shower before hitting the hay. The next day we were off to do the Great Ocean Drive before heading to Kalgoorlie and our first proper look at the outback proper. Sweet.

Laters all

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