Wednesday morning was supposed to see me go out on a wildlife sighting cruise in the waters off Esperance. Glen didn’t want to go because he has a thing about boats and being seasick, so I was all booked to go off by myself for three hours.

I had a truly horrendous night’s sleep. Despite going to bed at 9:30, tired as all hell, it took me forever to fall asleep, and when I eventually started to, I was shaken awake by Glen MOVING. The bed is comfortable but it’s one of those ones where every movement anyone makes shudders throughout the mattress. Top this off with Glen’s snoring (even though I was wearing earplugs) I must have managed only an hour or so all up, before, at 2:30am, I got up and went and slept on the couch.

Miraculously I managed to fall asleep…only to be woken at 5am by my friend in Melbourne butt-dialling me. Fortunately I was able to fall asleep again and got another couple of hours before I had to be up. I think those two hours were my most restful of the entire night.

Glen came with me down to the jetty as I hadn’t received confirmation that the cruise was definitely going ahead so when we got there and there was no boat, I was a little concerned. I rang the company and the skipper said that it wasn’t going to go ahead because they didn’t have enough people and “the girls in the office said they’d called everyone.”

So that’s who that phone call was from that came through in the afternoon the day before and I didn’t answer and I didn’t listen to the message. Right!

So he apologised and I apologised and then we said good day. I had the option of going out the next morning but after reviewing what we/I planned to get done on Thursday, I decided against it due to lack of time. Something for our next trip to Esperance!

We went home (after I cleaned the windscreen of bug bodies and Glen bought a coffee). Glen wanted to “have a morning off”, like that’s a thing people do on holidays, and because I was clearly antsy, he told me to go grocery shopping to get stuff for the next few days.

Glen’s usually the one who does the grocery shopping on holidays because he likes it and I don’t, but I sucked it up and with a task now to do went to the local Woolworths, picking up various supplies for two nights in Fitzgerald River National Park and listening to the sound of some woman screaming at a person on the other end of the phone about loyalty points and addresses and refunds.

I was then given another task of getting more takeaway coffee before heading home.

Glen was true to his word and occupied himself for the rest of the morning, then came with me out to Helm’s Arboretum, which is 15-minutes out of town. The large reserve is filled with trees (as expected) and bushes and wildflowers. There’s a drive track that you follow with arrows showing the right way to go, and large signposts with the species and common names of the various trees as you pass them.

Highlights were the orchids and some banksias and grevilleas, including these plants with green leaves that turn fire yellow and red. Very cool. The drive was quite long and maze-like but we eventually made it out. I’d seen wildflowers; I was happy.

On the drive back to town we got a look at Lake Warren, which is pink, and next to Pink Lake, which is not. There’s another proper pink lake near Esperance but it’s on Middle Island and you have to take a boat or a plane to get there. Lake Warren did nicely.

Next stop was the reconstructed Tanker Jetty, part of the multi-million dollar esplanade redevelopment. The jetty is about 800m long (I think). It’s a nice walk and gives a good view back of Esplanade. The end would be a fantastic place to go diving/snorkelling. After our stroll, we had smoothies, sat on the grass, played Pokemon, and watched people rescue a dog and go off to reunite it with its owner.

All that in the space of three hours!