On this trek you'll visit one of the world's most diverse botanical regions with more than 1800 different species of flowing plants in a national park, which is less than 330,000 hectares in size. You'll also get treated to some of the best coastal scenery in the country, some phenomenal beach and rock fishing, and wonderfully isolated campsites.
Fitzgerald River National Park is blessed with magnificent scenery, mountain ranges, red cliffs, rivers, inlets and the incredible white sandy beaches accenting clear azure blue waters of the southern ocean.
Bushwalking provides the opportunity to spot endangered native animals like the dibbler, a small marsupial which has recently been rediscovered in the park. You can go whale watching from Bremer Beach and Point Ann, two places along the coast where Southern Right Whales come to calve during their winter migration.
The park can be accessed from the western side via Bremer Bay - arguably the Western Australia’s most interesting town, or from the eastern side via Hopetoun. The central area of the park is only accessible with a four wheel drive vehicle or on foot.
NOTE: the route shown here uses 4WD tracks which Parks & Wildlife may close due to dieback, or may be closed due to seasonal issues. In particular, the sandbar over the Inlet in Bremer Bay has been exposed to the sea for the past few years and is currently impassable, which makes this route impossible (update: Sept 2023).
How to Use this Trek Note
- To download this information and the route file for offline use on a phone, tablet, headunit or laptop, go to the app store and purchase ExplorOz Traveller. This app enables offline navigation and mapping and will show where you are as you travel along the route. For more info see the ExplorOz Traveller webpage and the EOTopo webpage.
Environment
Fitzgerald River National Park is one of the world's most diverse botanical regions with more than 1800 different species of flowing plants in a national park, which is less than 330,000 hectares in size.
History
The coast around
Esperance was first visited by the French - an expedition led by Admiral Bruny D'Entrecasteaux - in 1792. Much of the coast east of
Hopetoun bears names assigned by these early French mariners. It is Matthew Flinders however who holds the honour of being the first European to visit the area around
Hopetoun in 1802. The next Europeans in the area were sealers chasing the highly prized pelts of the New Zealand fur seals. Norwegian and North American whalers also who plied the coast chasing the southern right whales.
It is one of these early whalers, a man by the name of Thomas who visited the area in the 1820s and is thought to have named the bay upon which
Hopetoun sits - Mary Ann Haven - after his daughter. The next significant visitor to the region was Edward
John Eyre who camped at Jeradcuttup Lakes and
Culham Inlet on his quest to be the first European to cross from South Australia to
Albany overland.
Eyre and his Aboriginal companion, Wylie, were lucky to have made it to
Hopetoun. Had it not been for a chance encounter with the whaling boat Mississippi in Rossiter's Bay (named by Eyre after the captain of the Missisippi) Eyre's epic journey may have ended very differently.
Edward Eyre named one of the district's most prominent geographical features - Mount Barren - and said of it in his journals: "Most properly had it been called Mt Barren, for a more wretched arid looking country never existed than that around it". How wrong could he be? The peak that he named lies in a region which has more than 1800 different plant species and is of international significance!
The area around
Hopetoun was first settled by
the brothers Dunn - one of whom,
John, first visited the area as a whaler in 1860s. In 1871
John Dunn drove sheep overland from
Albany - a trip which took him three months. He and his brother George were formally granted 4049 hectares of land on 1 January 1873 but the district's first pioneer never got to see the area reach its full potential. He was killed by Aboriginals in 1880 and his grave can be found on Concanarup Road (which runs off the South Coast Highway west of
Ravensthorpe - the turnoff is at ST 1).
It was another of the Dunn brothers who was responsible for the ultimate development of the district. In 1898 he found gold and copper near the Phillip River. This resulted in a dramatic gold rush, the development of a smelter at
Ravensthorpe, a railway line between
Ravensthorpe and
Hopetoun, a private jetty at
Hopetoun (which was built in 1901) and a wooden-structured
lighthouse (which was first lit in 1909).
Things started to decline in 1918 and by 1925 the railway line was closed and the port following shortly after in 1936. Sadly the jetty at
Hopetoun, which would have been at least as impressive as the fuelling jetty at
Esperance, was burnt to the waterline by the public works department in 1983 and little remains but the
Port Hotel, the old telegraph station and
post office and the old station building.
Bremer Bay (the bay, not the township) was named by Surveyor General
John Septimus Roe in 1849 and took its name from the captain of HMS Tamar, Sir
Gordon Bremer. It was first settled by the Wellstead family in the 1850's and the original township was actually named Wellstead.
Bremer Bay locals petitioned the government to have the town renamed in 1951.
The Wellstead's property is on Toolenburrup
Hill - 7KM south of
Bremer Bay - and is now the site of a wonderful café/restaurant and a museum which you need an entire day to do justice to.
TrekID: 96