By the shortest, sensible road route, Esperance is a whisker under 700 kilometres southeast of Perth, and just under 400 ks south of Kalgoorlie.
A further, easy 50 kilometres drive, east of Esperance, will take you to “the best beach in the world”, according a 2023 list of “The World’s 50 Best Beaches”.
You are not looking at it!
This post’s photo shows the very next beach, westward; my beloved and I are not alone in liking it rather more than we do the adjacent, “best” one.
Many an internationally-released poster and promotional video has featured kangaroos lolling upon a stunningly white beach, with waves breaking thereon, from an “impossibly” blue ocean.
The location: Lucky Bay.
Even if you have never been to Australia, let alone to Cape Le Grand National Park, chances are excellent that you have seen images and/or footage of Lucky Bay.
You may suspect that Australia’s tourism “tsars” have followed the unfortunate but now almost-universal example set by their peers, worldwide – supersaturating/ faking every green, white-ish or blue-ish hue.
Not so! Lucky Bay really does have some of the whitest sands and bluest waters on earth, and ‘roos really do frequent its beach.
In all aforementioned respects, Lucky Bay is not unique; the very same things are true of the very next beach, which is a tiny drive – or a short walk – away from Lucky Bay’s now oft-crowded strand. (crowded by south coast WA standards, at least)
Thistle Cove is a deal more compact than Lucky Bay, but is at least as lovely, and rather more dramatic.
So shallow is the “focus” (or attention span) of so many “bucket listers” that even on a day when the car park end of Lucky Bay is “packed”, Thistle Cove is usually nearly “empty”.
A substantial portion of those who “just have to see the best beach in the world” are persons who simply want “selfies” at whatever are currently-deemed the world’s “iconic”/“most instagrammable” spots.
They don’t walk more than 400 metres distant from car or bus, and once “done” with selfie-taking at Lucky Bay, they head out, without visiting any other of Cape Le Grand’s various other (all, stupendous) locations.
This idiocy has an upside, for those who do visit them.
In “the season” Lucky Bay no longer offers the “wild, deserted shore” experience it once did, but much of Cape Le Grand NP still does. (and Lucky Bay is still very beautiful)
You may notice some not-blue water and not-white sand on the lower right side of the photo I took of Thistle Cove at 2.11 pm on 11 September 2021.
Worry not; it is not evidence of “environmental degradation”…as will be illustrated in this series’ next chapter.
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