HOPES AND DREAMERS

Over the past five years, Esperance has emerged as a food and drink hotspot that’s been bolstered by the homecoming of many a creative thinker.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Esperance – an easy-going town of 14,000 residents some 700 kilometres south-east of Perth – was just another dot on the Australian coast. Towering pines and ’70s-era brick motels line The Esplanade. Campervans, top-heavy four-wheel-drives and fish and chippers are a common sighting. Traffic lights are not. It all looks and feels very summer holiday- by-numbers. But then you notice the scenery.

Even in a corner of the world not wanting for good looking shorelines (hi Margaret River, hi Albany) the coastal beauty of Esperance is something else. Swim beach Twilight Bay and surf hotspot West Beach – two addresses in most locals’ black books – would be shoo-ins on any Top WA beaches countdown. The sight-seeing gets wilder and more