Day 12

We left our cabin at the Caravan park in Denmark pretty early and started the ride into  Albany. 

A text message from my internet savvy mum and dad came through in messenger to remind me that the Albany was the place of the first Anzac Day dawn service and the place where the WW1 troops left from and that the Mounted Desert Corps memorial at the top of Mount Clarence was special and that we should definitely go and have a look.  It was and we spent a bit of time walking around and enjoying the views.

On the way back into town we spotted what looked like Albany's equivalent of San Franciscos' Lombard Street.  Bridge Street is Very steep and very curvy. At the bottom I plucked up my courage and attented an ascent.  It was a lot of fun and more than abit scary but I made it to the top with out a problem.  Amelia's ascent was sucessfull too.

Next was the big ride to Esperance. Not much to report here other than it was long and sparcely populated.  Highlights of the 580KM journey include the turn off to Bremer Bay and the road house just near by which would have to be one of the nicest, cleanest, and generally pleasant road houses experienced so far.  Other highlights of the journey were Amelia's power nap and Raventhorp, the two seperate eagles which seamed to swoop down to investigate Amelia's pink crash helmet, and being pulled over by the police.

Coming around a corner to be flagged down by a policeman had me feeling a little anxious but all it turned out to be was a mandatory rest stop.  We had our cup of tea an biscuits and to pass the time we started a conversation with the staff  about where to camp.  The conversation became quite animated and we were enthusiastically directed to a camp ground  2 hours ride away on the other side of Esperance and that we could probably make it by dark. This seemed a little ironic given that we had just been given quite somber lectures on the importance of not travelling to too longer periods of time.

We passed through Esperance on dusk just stopping for fuel and wine, and headed off in the dark with some vague directions and a few road names in our heads.  The road turned to gravel just as the moon made a stunning appearance on the horison and we rode side by side to double the power of our headlights to help in spotting animals. Eventualy we came to a caravan park and stopped.  It wasn't the Luck Bay camp ground we were looking for but we'd had enough of gravel roads int the dark by then and decided to stay for the night.

We made a yummy indian dinner out of an unexpected set of ingredinents.