A roadtrip to Esperance and Albany – Part V
Two hours after leaving the lush vegetation and mountainous coastline of the Fitzgerald River National Park, we arrived at our next destination: Bremer Bay. In this tiny village, which is at around 200 residents strong a third of the size of my little home village in Germany, the population over the Christmas holiday period reached almost 6,500 in 2018. Maybe that was the reason why I was quite literally laughed down the phone at when I had called a couple of places a few days prior to our trip to enquire about accommodation. Both the Bremer Bay Resort as well as a Bed & Breakfast featuring bay views were booked out until the end of March.
Hence we landed quite literally at Tozer’s Bushcamp, and what a blessing it was. Robert “Toze” Tozer built the bush camp on his farm in 2008, and it is a truly unique place to stay. It’s first come first serve, with over fifty campsites available and facilities which reminded me more of a hostel than a campsite: A fully equipped and massive camp kitchen complete with sofas, tables, cutlery and television (yes you hear correctly), a beautiful outdoor seating area complete with fire pit and barbeque, as well as spacious toilets and warm, adequately pressured showers. The place also features many rustic little details, like the beautifully handcrafted, wodden “Stargazer Restaurant and Bar” sign above the entrance to the kitchen, making it the place very charismatic. On top of that, the bush camp features around 12 km of walking trails, spotting many beautiful wildflowers in season. Among those are rare orchids, which aren’t even supposed to be growing in this area, as detailed in a book laying out in the camp kitchen. If you’re keen to see the orchids, make sure to go there when they’re in season (August – October, depending on the variety). The cost for all this wonderfulness isn’t more, if anything less, than for other campsites we stayed at, at only 15 AUD (8 GBP / 10 EUR) per campsite per night.
Upon our arrival, we decided to set up the smaller tent again because it was quite windy at the bush camp. Then we headed to the camp kitchen where we had a little beer with Toze before we cooked our dinner while fuelling up on trash TV (‘I’m a celebrity’ to be precise).
Bremer Bay is known for its beautiful beaches and of course, the whales. The next morning meant an early start for us at 6 am as the whale watching tour with Whale Watch Western Australia was due to commence at 8 am. It took us barely twenty minutes to drive the 5 km dirt road from Tozer’s to the main road and the 15 km into town.
To see orca whales in Australia, as opposed to the tour that I did in Canada, you really need to drive far out on the boat. Whilst humpback whales tend to come closer to the shore, the orcas are usually found in or near the Bremer Bay Canyon area in the southern ocean. We were lucky because it was a relatively calm day but the sea was seriously rocky all the same. The informative boat crew let us know that we only had swells of about a metre, but considering this, I don’t really want to imagine how bumpy the ride gets if the swells are much higher than this. We literally had to hold on tight to the railing and still sometimes our bums and feet lifted off the ground from going over the rough seas.
Thankfully, we had fuelled up on seasickness tablets the night before as well as before we took off, to avoid any seasickness setting in. Some other people on the boat were not quite as lucky and became sick pretty much as soon as we left the bay. I was the opposite pretty much, for I ate my way through the boat, savouring all the yummy snacks on offer ranging from sausage rolls, wraps, mini sandwiches and samosas to snacks, biscuits, cheeses, fruit and mini cakes. The sea just made me incredibly hungry that day.
50 km into the ocean and just over an hour’s drive, we found a pod of around 12 orcas nearby. They were hunting, so we could only see them coming up for air, which they apparently do every 5-6 minutes for a duration of minimum two minutes as the friendly and knowledgeable crew explained to us. We saw a particularly large male come close to the boat, as well as a smaller female, sometimes even swimming sidewise with their bellies facing towards the boat, to get a good look at us. It was truly breath taking to see these magnificent animals close by.
We got back to the bay at around 2:30 pm, exhausted but happy, and had to have a little rest on the campsite before heading back into town for a yummy dinner of Tasmanian Salmon at the Bremer Bay Resort – also the only pub in the little town.
On a side note: If you’re looking to go whale watching in the area, I’d highly recommend going out with these guys rather than their competition. A family business in 6th generation, Whale Watch Western Australia really shares a lot of knowledge about the whales and other animals and most importantly, they really make sure that they don’t influence the behaviour of the whales, i.e. they let those curious orcas come up close to the boat rather than chasing after them. We came across the other company’s boat, who were literally following our path to begin with, and then drove their boat in between ours and the whales, getting very close to them and basically driving them away, which I’m sure isn’t the way this is supposed to happen.
