Hi everyone. I hope that you are well. My name is Christian and welcome to my channel Backpacking Milanas. My boyfriend Ben who is behind the camera and I are on the biggest road trip of our lives across Australia. We are relocating all the way from Perth to Sydney. So, so far we've been on the road for four or five days. We started in Margaret River, went down to Hamlin Bay. We were then in Albany last night. And today we just did a 5hour drive to arrive in Espirants. And I'm so happy to be here. I've never been to Espirants before. I've heard that there's so many beautiful beaches. On the road trip, we are staying in a combination of hotels, Airbnbs, camping, and for the past two nights, we have been roughing it kind of
uh by camping. And so, I'm very excited to say that we're staying in a really lovely place here in Espirinance. And I want to show you just how close to the water it is. So, this is the beach here in Espirants, and this is where we are staying. And here we are. Welcome to our crib. So, we are staying at the RAAC Espirants Holiday Park. And we are in one of their one-bedroom garden studios. And I'm so excited to be here. So, outside we have our own sitting area. We have a barbecue. Do we think we're going to use the barbecue ben? Maybe. We are having steaks tonight, so we might give that a go. When you open the door, you come straight into the living space. I really like that they have made the living space particularly
large because this is where we're hanging out most of the time and I think when you're on the road you just want to be somewhere which feels like home. So we have a lovely sofa with a very large screen TV. We have a full and proper kitchen with every single appliance that we can think of. We've got an oven, a microwave, a massive fridge freezer. We have a hob. We have a coffee machine. And they've also kitted out the place with all the utensils that you could possibly need. And so we don't have to use any of our own stuff, which is lovely. This will be our eating area, but it's also going to be our workspace. Both Ben and I work online, so Ben's set up his computer here. I'll be setting up my
laptop here and going through to the bedroom where the magic happen. Is that what they say on crib? We have a beautiful big bed here. I love the fact that they've got artwork of espirants all around the apartment as well. And we have well and truly spilled out into the wardrobe area here. Definitely more my stuff than Ben's. Sorry, Ben. And then we have this beautiful on suite bathroom, toilet, and a beautiful double shower. And they've included amenities here as well. There's shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. And that is it for our little one-bedroom apartment here. I feel so relieved and happy to be somewhere that just feels like home for a couple of days. To be honest, we've
got three nights here before we make the humongous journey across the nullore. They actually have different studios and villas across the complex to accommodate whatever group size you have. And of course, they have loads of powered sight spaces for camper vans, motor homes, and trailers for those who already have their own setup, which is something both Ben and I definitely want to work our way up to throughout our time living in Australia. The shared kitchen facilities are absolutely huge. They have hobs, ovens, ample fridge space, ample dining space, and outdoor barbecues. I loved what a social setup this was with table tennis, TV room, indoor and outdoor hangout spaces, and even this gorgeous
pool for when the weather warms up a bit. Oh, it's nice. It's warm. Well, you know, not jacuzzi warm, but definitely swimmable. They've also got an entire playground for the families who have brought their kids along. I was in charge of the salad. Just some cos lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, a little bit of avocado, and some croutons with like a Greek style dressing kind of like feta and dill and whatnot. Hell yeah. Are we eating here? cuz we've taken up a table with basically our whole work set up. Oh, this is lush. Oh my gosh, I am so happy to be somewhere civilized again. This is so good. we've somehow accumulated so much laundry over the How many days have we been on the road now? Six. So,
we're going to do two lots at the same time. I've got these magic leaves. I had these for ages now. I think since Georgia last year and they're so good. You can use them for hand washing or for washing machines. because we've been on the road for about a week now. We just needed a whole day where we just caught up on work and life and admin and stuff. So, that's basically been what today is. And I've been pretty productive to be fair. Feeling pretty good about that. But on my Garmin Coach run plan, because if you don't know, I am training for an unofficial sub 2hour half marathon in December. I haven't signed up for a
race. That's just something that I would like to be able to accomplish. on my Garmin Coach run plan for that today. It says that I need to do a 1 hour and 24 minute run, which is the furthest I think I have ever run ever. So, I feel like Espirinance is a really nice place to do that. We have quite a long forshore stretch. So, we will see how far along that foreshore I get. I'm going to bring some Powerade with me. I fueled up on a few Percy pigs which my sister got me for my birthday. That in there. Hope that doesn't poke me in the face. 1 km 2 km 3k. I don't know if you can tell on the camera, but this is a big hill. I can't run all the way up the hill. We're walking. Okay, we're
still walking uphill. I've decided I'm going to go to a lookout, but it's up. Oh my god, look how blue that water is. Stunning. 5k 6k 7k 8 km 9 km and I'm on the jetty 10k 11 km that is 12 km and not long to go now probably will get another half a kilometer I did it. Proper little Explorer as best aspirant. That was good, but my legs feel like jelly. Let's look at the stats. 12.51 km and 24 minutes and 45 seconds. My average pace was 6 minutes 47. Yeah, elevation 145 m of elevation. That was such a big hill. Maintaining what? Good morning today. Well, it looks like it's going to be overcast, but it's not. The sun is supposed to well and truly come out this
afternoon. So, today is going to be our big exploration day in Espirinance. I'm really excited to go to the Cape L Grand National Park. We were supposed to be doing a 4x4 tour in the Cape L Grand National Park, but unfortunately the vehicle um is having issues this weekend and so it's been cancelled. But I still think that we should be able to get to a few of the main spots that we want to see. I also want to do a hike there. So, we're going to set off that this afternoon. But this morning, we've just come to the waterfront, the esplanars. The jetty that I ran down is just over there. And uh one of the girls that we met at Boston Brewery Co, Emma, last week recommended uh this fun little
coffee spot, which is right here. It's called Coffee Cat. So, we just ordered ourselves our usual double shot flat whites. Oh, that's a good one. That's nice. So, we've just arrived at Caitlyn Grand National Park, and we did have a feeling that this was going to be the case, but you do have to pay an entry fee. What's the entry fee? 17 bucks to bring your car in. Um, there's higher fees obviously if you want to camp at the campgrounds, but we're not doing that. We're just visiting for the day. So, we just paid 17 for the car.
Oh my goodness, how beautiful is this? So, I wanted us to do one big hike in Cape Lrand National Park just to get a good view of a lot of it. So, I've decided to do the one that's from Hellfire Bay to Cape Lrand Beach. It's an out and back and it's about 12.5 km for the return. And I think it's going to be about 600 650 m of elevation. So, a pretty decent hike. But, oh my god, just this first beach. This is Hellfire Bay. This is one of the most stunning things I think I've ever seen. Sand is so white. It's literally like glistening.
I feel like the camera is just not doing this justice. This is one of the most incredible beaches I've ever seen, if not the most. It's like otherworldly landscape. Very rocky. Not a single soul out here either. We have a wonderful view of Cape Lrand Beach now, but we're still quite far. This whole hike has taken us a bit longer than what we were expecting actually because the ground is very uneven and rocky. And what we're on now is actually some of the best of what we've been walking on. So, we've decided
that maybe we won't go all the way to the beach, but get to a nice little view spot, have our snacks, and then we can make it back in good time without risk of it getting dark. Oh, Hellfire Bay back in view. Okay, well, that was absolutely stunning, but hard, way harder than either of us were expecting. So, we're really glad at this point that we decided to cut it short because now we have a really nice amount of time before it gets dark to head to Lucky Bay. Uh now Lucky Bay is the really famous bay that's here in Cape Lrand National Park near Espirinance. And it's particularly famous because you're supposed to be able to see kangaroos on the beach. And
from what I've read, you're most likely to see the kangaroos on the beach at sunrise and in the late afternoon. So I was keen to arrive there in the late afternoon, which is what we're doing. We're going to arrive there around 4. We've now arrived here at Lucky Bay Beach. This is known for being the whitest beach in Australia. Even whiter than White Haven. Don't need the kangaroos or we haven't seen any kangaroos yet. We're going to drive onto the beach like other people have done. Normally that's a just a 4x4 activity, but the sand is quite hard at the moment and so we think that we're going to be able to be all right in our Mazda 6. Here we go.
Come on, you we little Mazda. First time driving on the beach. I'm surprised that they just let you drive on the beach here. I'm also just so amazed at like the small hills and mountainous landscape that kind of surrounds the beach. It makes it really unique. You can actually camp at Lucky Bay as well. You just need to make sure that you've booked it before you arrive in the park, I think, is the advice there. And maybe that is something that we will do another time. But I got to be honest, I am so happy that we are about to go back to RAAC now for our final night of civilization of just having our own bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom before we are about to do that.
Kangaroos. So, they may not have been on the beach, but they're still in the area. Hi, buddy. He's so chill. Like, not bouncing away at all. We've just noticed that he's got or she's got a Joey in her pouch. Well, would you believe that we've got everything packed in the car at the Nullore with space to spare? And you know why? Because we are ditching our mattress. This is the mattress that comes with the swag. And unfortunately, what we realized after our very first night of camping is that it does not pack down to even a fraction of the size that it was when we initially bought it.
Like, cuz it was completely vacuum packed. And so it's just been taking up the majority of the space in the car. Now, we have also been sleeping on top of an air bed in the swag. And so we're like, do you know what? It is a risk because if our air bed pops, then we have nothing. But it's a risk that we are willing to take for the next 3 days. Hopefully, it's something that someone will find useful. But unfortunately for us and our Mazda 6, it's just too big and we cannot take it. I'm feeling apprehensive about the next few days. It's been so lush. I feel like this time at RA Espirinance Holiday Park has been just what we needed to kind of catch up on all of our admin stuff and try and actually get ahead
because we know we're just not going to have hardly any electricity, hardly any service or anything once we're on the Nullore. We did our Woolworth shop yesterday morning, so our ice box is full. Our pantry is full for the next 3 days. There's just one thing that we forgot and that is some wet wipes for our body because we don't know how often we're going to be able to shower over the next 3 days. So, we're like we should definitely have at the very least some wet wipes. So, we're going to stop in Woolly's for that. But other than that, we're going to be on our way. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you guys enjoyed it. We have thoroughly enjoyed our time in
Espirants. It feels like the calm before the storm. But also, we did get out and do some beautiful exploring of Cape Lrand National Park. Oh my goodness. Some of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen in my life. Close up the boot. Do we have everything? Passports, phones, purse. I think so. I hope so. So, goodbye from me and goodbye from Ben. And we'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye. Claimed in black as night cloistered in injustice dead