After a relaxed sleep in after our big drive yesterday, we headed into the town of Esperance and checked out the recently redeveloped Foreshore including the iconic Whale Tail sculpture. We also stopped at the RSL building where there was an impressive mural by artist Miles Graeme Richards depicting the Lighthorsemen of The Great War. We decided to head back out the Great Ocean Drive once again and complete the 40km loop as we had only done part of it last night due to fading light. We visited some of the same beach lookouts again and you could not help but be bedazzled once again by the brilliant clear turquoise blues of the water, especially close to the |
As the Great Ocean Drive turns inland, we came across the famous Pink Lake, also known as Spencer Lake and their has been some considerable discussion of changing the name back to Spencer Lake since the Pink Lake lost it's pink colour several years ago.
After our drive we visited a fish leather tannery, the only specialist fish and shark tannery in Australia called Mermaid Leather. Uncertain as to what we were to expect entering into this warehouse in the industrial area of Esperance, we found it a very interesting and informative experience. As well as it being a working factory, it also catered for 'drop in's' like us and we were shown through the tanning process and given a multimedia presentation of the history of how Mermaid Leather came to be. As you can imagine, Jess was all ears!
For the evening we settled in to watch the AFL (Australian Rules Football) Preliminary Final between Richmond and Collingwood.