Wrestling Cape Arid

Day 6 – West of Eucla to Esperance (including the Cape Arid calamity!)

We got off to an early start packing up camp after a good night's sleep in the tent on the side of the road on the Eyre Highway.

Unfortunately, that highway rest area was probably the highlight of the day. We had an ordinary breakfast at Madura. Ordinary food (they mucked up the order) and ordinary attitude. Following breakfast we tackled probably the most ordinary part of the driving so far. The longest (and most boring) section of straight road in Australia. The scenery was pretty dull too so it was high fives all around once we hit our first bend!

We had a quick lunch in Belladonia Roadhouse; spent $50 on basic groceries we needed for camping (2x tins salmon, 1x tin of asparagus and BBQ sauce); and then we hit the dirt to Cape Arid.

Now we knew that we needed a 4wd to access the national park however, unfortunately, I don't think we were quite anticipating how long and tedious the drive was to become. After 2.5 hours of driving on rough road and dodging basketball sized goolies, we thought we should have arrived at a campsite – but alas, no campsite presented itself!! We then decided to proceed down another track in search of the said campsite, when we fell victim to a nasty twig.

Normally a blown tyre wouldn't phase us too much however: sunset was fast approaching, the hideous rocks were never-ending, no other cars were in site, we were in a remote location, and we were pretty stressed out that we were at high risk of losing a second tyre (that would have been a show stopper). Staying at Cape Arid was no longer an option – we needed to get out.

We proceeded with caution towards towards the South West entrance of the park closer to Esperance, We crawled along at ~20km/hr dodging literally thousands of the dodgy goolies! After about of hour of this, we were relieved to see that the rocks were becoming fewer in number – but alas, we had a new nemesis …. deep muddy pools of water!! We then managed to get stuck in the mud with water half way up the drivers side door. Luckily Nick was able to get us out in low gear without needing to use the winch (as it turns out, the would have been impossible to get to anyway because the controls were in the door on the side immersed in water).

Anyway, I'm rabbiting on … after a few more hours of dodging deep muddy waterholes and rocks, and after much contemplation of what would happen if we did lose a second tyre (when exactly do you actually set off an Epirb emergency beacon - when you run out of food, when you haven't seen someone for week??) we eventually got out of the national park and headed into Esperance. Stressed and weary after 15hours of gruelling driving, we checked into a hotel.  It was a bit of a dive but gee we slept well!!