Esperance, WA, Australia

I thought we might have been fitter at the end of the trip than we were when we started but today’s climb up the Porongurup range certainly tested us as we puffed our way up about 400 meters. The walking notes for the Granite Skywalk at Castle Rock said Grade 4 walk with a steep section at the finish, three-kilometre return allow two hours.

Well, I can tell you it was steep from the get-go and after we’d slogged our way up an endless climb we can to a marker that said we still had 1.2 of the 2.2km to go. Phoof, Lyn and I were sweating like pigs, it was much like it was in Vietnam, we were soaked. In fact, the climb was so tough that Lyn and I argued all the way to the top but at least it took our minds off puffing.

The wildflowers along the way were just superb. The walk itself doesn’t seem like it’s much-travelled and the wildflowers were in abundance. You’ll just have to look at the photos, there was a sea of pink, purple & yellow. This probably kept us going…Yes, there are photos….

The Granite Skywalk is a curved walkway secured to the side of a whacking great big boulder and there’s a pretty tricky little scramble to get up to the walkway which we didn’t need after ascending Everest like we just had. Thankfully we’d left the caravan park at 7:00 to get here early so that we can push on another 500kms. It was pleasantly cool as we climbed up the hill and even though the cloud hadn’t had a chance to burn off, making the photos a little grey, the views were sensational.

An hour up (almost exactly) and about 40 minutes down again, stopping along the way to shoot some more wildflowers. This had us back in the carpark about 10:30 and we moved out, destination Esperance, distance 457km….

Today’s driving was quite different as we travelled through the wheat belt. Broadacre wheat properties that have great looking crops as far as the eye can see, interspersed with canola. We stopped briefly for lunch at a rest area and then Lyn took the wheel for an hour or so while I pretended to sleep before swapping over again for the last 150km or so, getting into Esperance about 4:30pm.