Dream flying time in Esperance

Australia - Posted On

Esperance is a dream, complete paradise for the paragliding pilots and tired cyclists we are. 

We quickly find THE perfect free camping spot in the bush on the heights of Twilight beach, just 200m from a little parking place where we can take off. The rangers who usually chase the backpackers touring around here cannot see us thanks to the discretion of the cyclo-touring way of travelling. This is another positive point of the travel on a bicycle. We can hitchhike easily to town to do our groceries and we have enough shadow under the bushes to lie down all day doing nothing if we don’t feel like moving when it’s not flyable. But it IS flyable most of the time, which make this paradise even more a paradise! And the pristine beaches with sandy cliffs all around offer us a magnificent landscape to fly over. 

Close by lives Kym and his father, 20.000AU$ guitar-maker. Kym practices kite-biking on the beach with a mountain bike, so that he can keep up with his dad on a land yacht. He’s one of the very few people who ever attempted this. And it works quite all right with a real inflatable kite! The day we practice together we got all the toys out, kitesurfs, paraglides, kitebiking; land yachting, mountainboarding…. This is time for creation into the wind!

So passes the time in our shelter up on the cliff. I can improve my little homemade chasecam, personal creation made of a telescopic pole with a standard screw in the end for the camera. A piece of string allows it to be well balanced horizontally in the air and being attached to one of the lines of the wing. Then we can see the pilot from the side. See pictures.

A couple of friends of France show up: Biloute and that good old Beun, who developed his own brand of kite, Ikon. As we talk wings, he becomes so keen on my project that he decides to make a new model for me out of a serial one, something light, efficient and with good performances. The fabric will be provided by Porcher sport, another sponsor of the project. We’ll see that in Perth. Meanwhile I can enjoy the NASA type one on the coastal road. We make some beautiful images of it with our new backpackers friends Pierrick & co.

Travelling with Seb comes to an end when we both realize it is time to keep going each other on our way. There had been some positive things together but also very angry and frustrating time. He will follow the coast; I will go straight to Perth, and share some time with happy friends I need now to see.