Esperance….. a place we call home

After spending 5 years living in Haifa, Israel, we have returned to Australia and commenced a new life in Esperance on the Great Southern Ocean in Western Australia. It is a beautiful city with a population of about 15,000. However, it is remote, being 8 hours drive southeast of Perth, and 4 to 5 hours east of Albany. So many people have asked us why we ended up in Esperance. Well, we loved it on our first visit in 2004, and on subsequent visits, and decided that we would retire here. It is a somewhat typical Australian country town – the people are friendly and the lifestyle relaxed.

We arrived on May 1^st and our shipment container from Israel, with most of our worldly goods, arrived on 16^th May.

So for the first 2 weeks in Esperance, we camped in – using the plastic cutlery from the Qantas flight to Perth and some outdoor furniture (a table and 2 benches put into service indoors!!!) which we have bought for the patio. We had a bed and fridge delivered prior to our arrival so it was very liveable—amazing how you can live with very little, well at least for a while.

Our house
is less than 500m from the beach
and the neighbours on one side live in established homes
while on the other side newer houses have been built.
This street is called Ormonde, and it runs north/south near our house.
At the end is a cul-de-sac and a small lane takes you directly to the beach
There is a boat marina about a 1 km walk along the beach to the east and Allan’s morning walks often finds him enjoying sitting on the rocks of the breakwater and thinking great thoughts!

You can imagine that fishing is a very popular pastime in Esperance.

In the quiet of the morning and evening, you can hear the waves crash on the beach from the outside entertainment area (wooden patio deck) of our house. Here are some blocks of land for sale, only 100 metres from the beach if you wish to come and join us.
Esperance is also know as “The bay of islands” and in some ways, the bay
reminds us very much of the view from our lounge room window in our Haifa flat looking towards Akka and beyond to Bahjí and Nahariyh (that was a most spectacular view which we were blessed with for the last 18 months of our sojourn in the Holy Land). Back to Esperance, most of the islands across the bay are protected under the aegis of the Parks and Wildlife Dept, and are accessible by small boats. There are boat trips organised for Woody Island,

a very popular tourist destination.

Like Haifa, Esperance is also a port

and grain (mainly wheat and canola) as well as some minerals, are exported from here. All these commodities are stored in covered sheds or silos to prevent any dust from escaping, thereby maintaining the very high quality of life that is enjoyed by us—well, we might be officially regarded as locals in about 10 years from now.

There are some amazing local photographers, and the environment gives them so much scope. This photo

shows the marina in the bottom left of the picture, the port in the top left, and the many lakes surrounding the Esperance Township—one is called the Pink Lake, due to its amazing colour during an algal bloom.

Nothing in Esperance is far—the city centre

is only 5 minutes by car, and Muna enjoys the approx. 4 km walk to town
Walking alongside the beach most of the way, the ground is flat so easy on her knees and back. These trees line the route and

make it even more picturesque, as well as shady in summer. Imagine having to drive only 5 minutes to get to work and no “traffic jams” anywhere anytime! No traffic lights either!!!

With most of the unpacking of boxes from our shipment completed and the garage full of empty boxes, it is time to enjoy the beautiful scenery – Allan aspires to take photos like the following

and has joined the local photography club to further develop his skills – more about that later.

This was to be our last blog post, as we are sure that you are tired of getting these updates, and Israel is ever so much more interesting that Oz. However, we have decided to send a future post, sharing details and more photos of our day-to-day life in Esperance.