Day 8: Esperance to Albany
The one thing I knew about Esperance (from watching a recent Bill Bailey's Wild West Australia on ABC TV) was that it has a full-sized replica of Stonehenge. I visited the real Stonehenge with my young son on our second day in England in 2007, and I was keen to see the Esperance version with him.
However, while I was excited to walk about the replica stones as they would have stood 4000 years ago in the days of druids and mammoths, my son was as underwhelmed as he had been as a jet-lagged five-year-old. And that's a shame because, in my opinion, the Esperance Stonehenge is a sympathetic homage to the original on Salisbury Plain.
At Stonehenge in England, 2007 (click for larger image)
At Stonehenge in Esperance, 2023 (click for larger image)
It was another long drive from Esperance to Albany, with the highway running through hilly pastures dotted with trees — it was greener, but I missed the dry Nullarbor scenery. We encountered our first traffic light since Adelaide at a road works zone, and it was red. When we stopped, the van's Check Engine Warning light came on, and my son had a minor panic attack.
I suggested we "nurse" the van to the next petrol station, check the oil and water and see if the light went off, as it had in Sydney the week before we set off. The light stayed on, but Googling it reassured us the van wasn't about to break down and we could investigate the problem in Margaret River or Perth.
My son dropped me at the hotel in Albany he'd booked for me for the night and headed off to catch up with friends camping further along the coast. (He texted shortly afterwards that the Check Engine Warning light went off in a nearby supermarket car park!)
The hotel described my overnight accommodation as a "Shoe Box Room". I requested another room because my "shoe box" was above the beer garden. "Do you mind sleeping in a single bed?" the receptionist asked. Erm, I've been sleeping on a camp stretcher in a tent for the past week.
My "Shoe Box Room" in Albany (click for larger image).
