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| Sunrise at Lucky Bay, Cape Le Grand, Esperance, Western Australia. © T-Rex Photography | Tom Jessett | 2015 |
Ah, early mornings, don't you love them? Nah, me neither! But when you want to see kangaroos on a beach with sand that's so fine that it squeaks between your toes, you pretty much have to go with the whole early morning thing, which is what we did on Western Australia Day.
A few weeks
ago, The Photographer and I were chilling out at home, doing a few housekeeping
things for our trip around Australia. As usual, his mind is distracted by
conjuring up ideas on what photos he can take that day or the next day or the
next weekend or whenever he has any free time whatsoever. And, in following
those thoughts, he asks me, 'Do you want to go to Lucky Bay this weekend to see
if you can see the kangaroos?' My immediate reaction is 'Yes!' because I
haven't seen the kangaroos at Lucky Bay yet, even though I have lived in
Esperance for nearly two years and been to Lucky Bay a few times before. Oh my goodness, he's offering me the chance to join him on one of his exciting and fun-filled photography adventures by seeing the kangaroos on the
beach at Lucky Bay! But, there's a catch – it's going to be a sunrise photography adventure...That conversation went a bit like this: Me:
'Ohhh. Right.'Pause.Me:
'Okay, in that case, you'll have to, (1) wake me up, (2) dress me, and (3)
carry me into the ute.'Pause.The
Photographer: 'Okay, you can go in your pyjamas.'Me:
'Okay.' And with
that, the decision was made – we were going to see the sunrise and kangaroos on
the beach at Lucky Bay in my pyjamas! Woohoo! This
really got my hopes up. I know I shouldn't have had my hopes though because,
even though it's common to see kangaroos at Lucky Bay, it's not a given – mainly
because they're wild animals and they're not on any schedule to suddenly appear
to entertain tourists who have come to see them in their bog-standard, natural
habitat.
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| Mama kangaroo hopping away from us. |
Now, believe it or not, I was
genuinely worried about the whole 'sunrise' part of this trip because I am not
a morning person. Usually if I have an 'option' to rise early, after waking up
from the alarm, I normally end up refusing to get up (I'm a right grumpy-pants when
I'm tired) and leave my poor T-Rex to go out all on his own. Actually, I don't
think he particularly enjoys having me around when he's shooting; I get a bored and he feels like he has to rush. But this time, I woke up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! (So to
speak.) For clarity: I'm excited. At this point,
I'm thinking, 'coffee', so that I don't fall asleep on the way or while we're
get there. Although, given how excited I was, I probably didn't need coffee
that morning. Anyway, as I start making coffee to take away, the Photographer
is looking at me sideways and says to me, 'I was actually thinking of getting coffee
and breakfast from the McDonald's drive through with breakfast.' Me: 'Good
thinking Batman.' So I left the cold milk in the frother and off we headed to
McDonald's drive through for coffee and breakfast before heading to Lucky Bay.
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| Lucky Bay, Cape Le Grand, Esperance, Western Australia. © T-Rex Photography | Tom Jessett | 2014 |
Driving
out to Lucky Bay from Esperance takes about 45 minutes. If you have a four
wheel drive vehicle, then you're allowed to drive along the beach. I've read
one review somewhere that complained that Lucky Bay isn't all it's cracked up
to be as the 'best beach in Australia' because the sand is hard and compacted
from everyone driving on it – he was sorely disappointed. The second part is true – the sand is hard and
compacted because of everyone driving on it – but the first part is a complete
misinterpretation of the fact that Esperance has, at some stage, been voted to
have the 'best beaches in Australia'. However, Lucky Bay itself has
never been voted THE best beach in Australia (which is obvious if you've ever visited
Lucky Bay and compared it to other beaches in Esperance and many other Australian
beaches – it's true, there are loads of beaches in Australia that are way better than
Lucky Bay). Lucky Bay is popular because of the seemingly tame kangaroos on the
beaches and the colour of the water. The fact that the colour of the water is famous, however, strikes me as a bit odd
really because the water at every other beach in Esperance is that same colour –
it's Esperance's standard beach water colour. Also, I think that that particular writer
only visited two of the dozens of amazing beaches in Esperance and, in my opinion, having visited many of the beaches here, Lucky Bay is
definitely not the best. Of the ones I've been to, my favourites would be Blue
Haven, Hellfire Bay and Thistle Cove but that's a whole other post that I won't
be getting into here.
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| Looks are deceiving. That water is freezing. Lucky Bay, Cape Le Grand, Esperance, Western Australia. © T-Rex Photography | Tom Jessett | 2015 |
As The
Photographer is setting up his camera and taking photos of the sunrise, I'm somewhere
close by, jumping up and down, kicking my legs and jogging around to try and stop
my toes from going numb. FYI, it's freezing at Lucky Bay at 6:00am in autumn; you need warm trousers, a jacket and warm shoes...unless you're European, then 10 degrees Celsius is toasty warm and great for swimming in the ocean in your bikini, as did the girl we saw when we were that morning! F**king nuts if you ask me. She was definitely European - Europeans LOVE swimming in freezing cold water; Australians do not.
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| My iPhone camera attempt at capturing the mama and joey. Lucky Bay, Cape Le Grand, Esperance, Western Australia. |
With the
sunrise photos done, it's now all about waiting for the kangaroos to appear…or
not. After killing some time by driving back up and around some of the other nearby
bays, we set ourselves up again on the beach at Lucky Bay. The most active
times for kangaroos is dawn and dusk when they have their breakfast and dinner. I
don't know what they do for lunch but I guess they graze during the day, or
sleep, or hop around, or something. Around 7:40am, having still not seen any
kangaroos, I'm starting to lose a bit of hope but, at the same time, probably prepared
to hang around all day, just in case they do appear. I can tell The
Photographer is thinking about leaving soon if we don't see any kangaroos but then
he spots some movement in the distance to the west end of the beach, among the seaweed… 'KANGAROOS! IT'S A MAMA AND A JOEY! OH MY GOODNESS, I'M SO EXCITED!' We make a slow beeline in their direction, so as not to scare them off – even
though they're used to humans gawking at them – because they can still be easily
scared off.
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| 'Care to join me for breakfast?' © T-Rex Photography | Tom Jessett | 2015 |
As we're getting
close to them, they move around and away from us but settle in another spot to graze in the seaweed.
They start grazing again and we manage to get within about a metre from
them and The Photographer managed to get this beauty (above) of the joey. The joey
is curious and looks at us more often than his mum, which is how The
Photographer managed to get this photo of him looking directly into the lens.
His mum on the other hand, couldn't give a toss about us really 'cause she's
just having her breakfast, it seems.
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| The moment The Photographer took that photo. |
Once we
got our fill of photos and gawking, we started making our way back to the ute.
Some of the people from the campsite came out to look at the kangaroos after we
left but shortly thereafter, the kangaroos hop away back into the bush to do
whatever the Luck Bay kangaroos do.
I finally got to see kangaroos on the beach at Lucky Bay!
The End!
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| The Photographer's photo was feature on Tourism Australia's Facebook page. |
If you want to follow our journey around Australia and see more of The Photographer's talent, i.e., his photos, visit T-Rex Photography here:
Instagram @trex.photography
Steller @TRex
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