After successfully crossing the Nullarbor, we were looking forward to experiencing Western Australia’s beaches that we have heard so much about. This post covers our experiences in Esperance, Albany, and Denmark, Western Australia.

If you are interested in reading about the earlier stages of our road trip, I have included the links below:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Day 19-23

After packing up and leaving Norseman, it was a 2-hour drive down to Esperance. We got really lucky with a grassy and secluded campsite, and felt especially relieved considering that we were staying in town for 5 nights. This had not originally been our initial plan, but all the sites in Esperance had a minimum 5-night stay over the school holidays. We spent the rest of the day catching up on laundry, fixing our cracked windshield, and getting groceries for our “extended” stay.

The next day, we were ready to explore Esperance’s world-famous beaches. We took our car on the Great Ocean Drive, which is a 40 kilometre loop of road that takes you to the best beaches near Esperance.

We stopped frequently at lookouts and beaches, even seeing dolphins from a lookout of a beach called “Blue Haven”. The water at all of the beaches was crystal clear, but much colder than Queensland! The beaches were also our first exposure to a real shark risk, which scared us a little. We made sure to stay close to the shore when we were swimming.

On day 21 of our trip, we started the morning checking out Pink Lake, which unfortunately is no longer pink due to a change in water drainage patterns many years ago. It was still a beautiful white colour! After Pink Lake, we ventured farther down the Great Ocean Drive to some beaches we hadn’t reached on the previous day. We were happy to discover that these new beaches had little lagoons in front of the real surf, formed by rock protecting the crystal clear and calm water that ebbed and flowed with the tide. It was magical. Our favourite stop by far was Eleven Mile Beach. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

We took a bit of a longer adventure on Day 22 about 45 minutes east of Esperance to Cape Le Grand National Park. We started our visit with a climb up Frenchman Peak in the park, which was a little bit of trail followed up straight climbing up a huge rock face. It was a very technical but fun hike, but unfortunately we didn’t get to enjoy the view too much due to a wasp issue at the top.

As soon as we stopped to catch our breath, I began to hear wasps buzzing around my head, and before I knew it, one had flown up my shirt and stung me! Poor George got stung in the face right after as he was trying to help me. As you could imagine, we rushed down the mountain as soon as we could and didn’t get any super great photos.

After the hike, we went to check out some of the famous beaches in the park. First, we went to Lucky Bay, which was named Australia’s best beach in 2023. It is famous for having kangaroos on the beach as well. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any kangaroos, and the beach was super busy with vehicles that are allowed to drive on the beach. We did think the white sand was gorgeous! We spent the rest of the day exploring the park and taking a look at the other beaches and bays within it.

We had a very relaxed Day 23 as we went back to Eleven Mile Beach to enjoy the day.

Day 24-25

On day 24, we packed up camp and drove for 4 hours to the next beautiful beach town of Albany. We made a quick stop at the Valley of the Giants, which is home to ancient red tingle trees, and has some lower and upper boardwalk routes to see the trees up close. We took a walk around the lower boardwalk to admire the trees, and then continued on our way.

We were excited to arrive at our fantastic holiday park in Albany which had the added bonus of a pizza oven! I may seem to be talking about the quality of the campsites a lot in these blog posts, but when you are 24 days into a road trip where you are camping 95% of the time, campsite quality is of the utmost importance.

It was another administrative day for us after we arrived in Albany, but we were excited to use the pizza oven. We had the added bonus of seeing a king’s skink in the open-air kitchen, who we think lives under the kitchen’s fridge.

We planned to go on a hiking adventure for day 25 of the road trip, to visit Porongorup National Park for the Granite Skywalk hike. We had seen from our research that it was the best hike to do in the area, and were intrigued by the idea of climbing up a giant granite walk and walking along its edge.

The hike itself was quite easy, with a slight uphill taking us to the giant granite rock face. We enjoyed climbing up the rock with the help of some metal handlebars, and I had to face my fear of ladders to get up to the very top of the skywalk portion of the rock. The skywalk is a constructed walkway that hangs over the rock’s edge and provides spectacular views of the surrounding landscape.

We spent the rest of day 25 exploring downtown Albany, taking a walk around and seeing what the town had to offer. There was a nice variety of shops and things to look at, and the high street had a scenic slope down to the water’s edge.

Day 26

We enjoyed our hike to Granite Skywalk so much that we decided to tackle the Bald Head hike in Torndirrup National Park on day 26 of the road trip. The hike involves climbing up to a ridge and then hiking across it to the end of the headland on the ocean. It was definitely the most beautiful hike in Australia that we have done so far this year!

The entire hike is just over 14km return and takes about 5 hours to complete. We had originally planned to hike to the end of the headland, but after about 5.5 kilometers in, we started encountering some very windy conditions so decided to turn around. We thought the first hour or so of the hike was the most scenic, anyway, so didn’t regret our decision. This hike had the best effort-to-views ratio that I have done in a long time.

Next, we headed to Misery Beach – I was excited to go as I had recently learned that it was named the best beach in Australia in 2022. I personally thought Misery Beach was much more beautiful than Lucky Bay, though like I have said in previous posts, I have become a bit of a beach snob. It felt really nice to dip my toes in the water after the hike we had just finished.

We then went to take a look at Frenchman Bay, which was another beach close by. It was also beautiful and had great infrastructure to spend a whole day there. We then went to take a look at the Historic Whaling Station, where we didn’t end up going in but did have a nice cool drink on their patio. It is a great place to stop and cool down and had some amazing views.

Our last stop of the day was The Gap and Natural Bridge, which are rock formations that have observation decks and viewpoints installed nearby to get a closer look. They were really cool to see, and we enjoyed learning about the geological history behind the formations.

Day 27-28

It was nice to have a short drive between towns on Day 27, traveling from Albany to Denmark, which only ended up being about 45 minutes. Denmark is a very cool hippie town that feels like you have traveled back in time. On arrival, we spent some time exploring the shops and bakery in the area. We were excited to buy a new board game called Trails and eat some delicious meat pie at the local bakery (apparently the best in Australia).

We checked into our campsite and set up camp, and then headed back out to take a look at the beaches nearby as well as Monkey Rock. Monkey Rock is one of Denmark’s sights to see and involves a 20-minute uphill hike before revealing a natural granite formation that resembles a monkey’s face, with fantastic views of the surrounding landscape.

The next day, we set off for Denmark’s other big natural attractions, Greens Pool and Elephant Rocks, located in William Bay National Park. On the way to the park, we stopped at a chocolaterie that was advertised by a sign on the side of the road and were delighted to learn that they offered a chocolate tasting platter. George and I both LOVE tasting platters of every kind, so we were very enthusiastic to try it. We thought it was a fantastic menu idea.

Next, we arrived at Williams Bay Park. We first walked down to Greens Pool, which had a beautiful beach, interesting rock formations in the background, and a calm and clear swimming area. It was a bit too cold for us to swim, but we really loved walking along the beach. We then walked over to Elephant Rocks, which is a stunning rock formation characterized by massive granite boulders resembling a herd of elephants in the shallows of the clear ocean water. The rocks were beautiful, but we definitely thought Greens Pool was more spectacular.

We spent the rest of the day driving around local stops and enjoyed the scenery. This included a cidery where I did a tasting, as well as a cheese factory where we had a cheese tasting board that was absolutely amazing. As it was also Australia Day on this day of our trip, we headed down to the water’s edge of town to take a look at the festivities that were going on.

Denmark was stunning, though our experience there was slightly clouded by the chaos and dust clouds of our campsite. We were sad to leave the beauty behind but definitely looking forward to better accommodation.

Day 29

We had a long and slow drive (I fell asleep for a lot of it) from Denmark to the town of Augusta, which is about 4 hours’ driving distance from each other. Augusta is a coastal town located at the meeting point of the Southern and Indian Oceans, known for its historic Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse. After getting into town, we drove down to the lighthouse to take in the beautiful views.

At this point in the trip, we were really looking forward to the cabin we had booked for 5 days in Margaret River, so we just needed to get through the last night of camping! We stayed at a beautiful campsite right on the water of Flinders Bay, and because it didn’t have a camp kitchen, we took the night off from cooking. Instead, we spent the evening in a local pub on the water having dinner and a drink while playing our new board game we bought in Denmark.

This blog series has felt like an adventure in itself! I will be back soon with Part 6, discussing our final days of the road trip as we spent time in Margaret River, Busselton, and then our final drive to Perth. Thanks for reading!