I’m spending my second night in a youth hostel in Esperance. Yesterday I was the youngest resident (with several retirees). Today I’m the oldest. Ahhh… you’re never too old to backpack.
A farmer staying here told me yesterday, that there are big bucks to make selling “Blood and Bone” fertilizer, and that’s what the kangaroo collector was probably doing with them in South Australia. He also told me how road train drivers approach livestock when they’re on the road — usually aiming to knock them on the edge and not hitting them full on (which would cause too much damage to their trucks). Ah, the joys of road kill talk…
The weather has been very stormy for most of my stay here, but it has just begun to settle down. To take refuge from the rain, I spent some time perusing the local museum. The coolest exhibit they had was what is left of Skylab, which fell here in 1979. It was really interesting to see all the bits, some of them huge, and read all the newspaper articles. I can remember everyone worrying about whether it would fall on them back in the U.S. I also remember NASA claiming that it safely landed in the Indian Ocean — just before the people of Esperance announced that actually it fell on them. There were big things in the exhibit like the freezer, hatch door, and a giant cylinder. It’s a miracle none of it landed on anyone’s head.
The weather did manage to clear up enough for me to see the outdoor sites as well. The “Big Sur” type drive is really spectacular with many an endless beach with lots of white sand and huge rocks. The local national park has pure white beaches that seemed to run for dozens of miles. There were also whales in the neighborhood, but I didn’t personally see any.
Tomorrow I will head for Walpole (in the thick of the Karri forests south of Perth) to spend the night before making that final last 5 hour leg back to Perth on Sunday.
