Esperance
White Sand and Beach Kangaroos
On the lands of the Wudjari people.
schedule 1 min read / Updated Apr 2026
On the remote south coast of Western Australia, eight hours south-east of Perth, Esperance is a small fishing town surrounded by some of the whitest sand beaches and bluest water on Earth. Cape Le Grand National Park has Lucky Bay, where kangaroos lounge on the beach.
Esperance was named in 1792 by the French explorer Bruni d'Entrecasteaux after one of his ships, L'Esperance. The town sits on the edge of the Recherche Archipelago, a chain of more than 100 small islands offshore. The water visibility is exceptional and the sand on the local beaches is some of the whitest in Australia, partly because it's almost pure quartz with very low organic content.
Cape Le Grand National Park, 50 kilometres east of Esperance, is the headline destination. Lucky Bay was scientifically tested as having the whitest sand in Australia in 2017, edging out Hyams Beach in NSW. The bay's other claim to fame is the population of around 30 western grey kangaroos that regularly come down to the beach to lounge on the sand. The Frenchman Peak walking track in the same park is a steep 90 minute return climb to one of the most photographed views on the south coast.
Lake Hillier, the bright pink lake on Middle Island, is also accessed from Esperance via scenic flight or charter boat.
Esperance is genuinely remote. The drive from Perth takes around 8 hours via the wheatbelt towns of Hyden (Wave Rock) and Norseman. Most travellers either drive across or fly into Esperance Airport from Perth.
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- End of South Coast Highway, Esperance.jpg · Orderinchaos · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Island off south coast of WA near Esperance.jpg · JarrahTree · CC BY 2.5 au
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