Coral Bay

We arrived in Coral Bay on Wednesday 24th August and today is Saturday 27th August and we have spent some part of every day on the beach. All there is at Coral Bay is 2 caravan parks, some backpacker accommodation, a few holiday homes and a couple of small shopping centres.... and of course the beautiful Ningaloo Reef and associated coral and clear water. The first thing we did after arriving was to go across the road to the shops and book a trip on a semi submersible boat to have a look at the reef.

The semi submersible is a boat with a very shallow draft. You walk down underneath the deck level and sit on benches in front of big windows and look out as the boat moves alongside the reef. In glass bottom boats you look down on the coral. In the semi submersible you go alongside the coral. We booked this for Thursday morning at 10am.



This is the semi submersible boat. You go down under the deck and under water to view the fish and coral

 It was quite amazing. The coral is hard coral, unlike the Barrier Reef which is soft coral. Hard coral does not have the colour but it does have amazing structure. There is some colour, such as blue and lavender but it is mainly greens and browns.



Cabbage coral




Fish in staghorn coral




Blue tipped coral




Lavender coral

 Some of the fish around the coral were spangled emperor, scissor fish, parrot fish, wrasse, leatherjacket, damselfish, trevally, mullet and angelfish. It was just incredible.

Spangled Emperor

We stopped out on the reef to feed the fish and there was a feeding frenzy around the boat.

It was quite windy when we got back so there was no snorkelling today.

On Friday we went for a drive out to the Coral Bay Marina. The colours around the marina were amazing from the different depths of the water. There is mostly a sandy bottom near to shore so the reflections of the sky make for great colour in the water.

While walking along the jetty we seen a huge groper. It was just cruising around under and around the jetty. He was very big, probably about 5 feet long and about 200kg. There were hundreds of bait fish swimming around him but keeping clear of his mouth.

We bought some more tiger prawns for tea and bought an extra kilo to put in the freezer for later.

We decided to check up on our accommodation in Perth and when we contacted them originally, they said we could store our van and car with them for $50 per week. When we rang up yesterday it turns out that our van and truck are too big to go into their storage facility so we could leave it on the site we would be staying on for $37 a night. When we worked that out including the nights we were going to stay there it worked out to be more than $800. A bit rich we thought. Now, someone had told us that you can camp at the Seventh Day Adventist camping area in Maida Vale in Perth, so we rang them up and they will store our van and truck for $4 a night. We will stay there for 2 nights before and 2 nights after for $30 per night. They have all of the amenities and power and water. They only have a couple of rules - no smoking and no alcohol. So we will have some alcohol free days but the price is right for the storage and it is only about $25 in a cab to the airport.

Now today is Saturday and our last day in Coral Bay. We went over to the beach this morning and snorkelled around amongst the beautiful fish. We saw a huge clam in the water and all of the little tropical fish were swimming around it. It is just like swimming in a huge fish tank. The fish are very safe here as the area off the front of the beach is a marine park and no fishing is allowed, so you have huge spangled emperor swimming around you. They say they are a beautiful eating fish so they can count themselves pretty lucky that they are in a protected zone.

Tomorrow we move on to Carnarvon for a couple of days.

Exmouth

We are now in Exmouth. We had a long drive from Karratha, about 560km so Saturday was a long day. We arrived in Exmouth about 3.30pm and set up the van. We didn't have much of a look around as it was getting late although we did notice that there is a lot of new building going on.

Exmouth was built to  to accommodate the Americans working at the US Naval Communication Station H E Holt. Today it still operates as the Australian Naval Communication Station. Apparently they are in the process of completely rebuilding the school as the classrooms were only small as per American schools. Now they are going to be like Aussie classrooms with lots of kids in each class!!!

Towers of Naval Communication Station

We woke up on Sunday morning to a cloudy day but it didn't take long to burn off to a lovely day. After breakfast we went and had a look at the shops which were pretty good. A couple of supermarkets, butchers (which has been the first one since Broome), surf shops, diving shops, jewellers, newsagent, PO and cafes. A quite lively place with lots of tourists.

We then drove out past the Naval Communication Station which is fairly high security and out to Bundegi Beach which is where the boat ramp is.

 Ray helped a few people launch their boats and I think he was secretly hoping they would ask him to go with them, but they didn't. There were heaps of fish in the water and also a few sea snakes.

Next stop, Vlamingh Head Lighthouse from where we had a great view north out of Exmouth Gulf and also south down along the western side of the Cape down to Cape Range National Park.

View north from lighthouse

View south from lighthouse

Next we drove out to look at the wreck of the SS Mildura which sunk off the coast in 1907. We were quite surprised to see most of the hull still intact and wedged up against the rocks, after more than 100 years. It is now a breeding place for sharks and contains a shark nursery.

We  then had 1kg of fresh prawns for lunch, which were very nice and then went and had a look at Town Beach and Pebbly Beach.We collected some shells at Town Beach.

 We saw heaps of whales frolicking off the coast, breaching and fluking. Great fun to watch.
On Monday we woke up to a horrible morning. It was cloudy and really foggy with lots of moisture in the air. We still decided to go to Cape Range National Park, hoping the weather would improve. By the time we got over to the west side of the Cape, the cloud had lifted and it turned out to be a lovely day. We stopped at South T Bone Beach first and walked along the beach and out to the rocks. You could see the inside edge of Ningaloo Reef. We couldn't believe it was so close.

Next stop was Turquoise Bay and you could see how it got its name. We had bought some snorkels and goggles in Broome and I had my first go at snorkelling. It was fantastic.

 The fish were just swimming around my legs looking for food as I stirred up the sand with my feet. Ray swam out to the coral and could see some larger fish, leather jackets and long nose emperors just nosing around the reef.
We then went to Trealla Beach to have lunch and while there we could see the whale shark boat out on the reef with the spotter plane circling above.

Next, out to Mesa Camp and Ned's Camp, two beautiful camp spots in the National Park. We intended staying at Mesa Camp before we had our van problems but it turned out that Neds camp was better. While looking at Neds Camp we bumped into Col and Kim who had been on the Horizontal Falls trip with us. We knew it was them as they drive a Winnebago "Longreach" and tow a Landcruiser on a trailer behind it. Quite unique. It truly was a wonderful day today.

We even took a photo of Sturts Desert peas with red centres which are unique to the Exmouth area.

Ospreys nesting at Cape Range National Park

Whale shark model in Exmouth

Now it is Tuesday and today is domestic duties day. Washing and around camp. we went for a walk on the beach and collected some more shells and tomorrow we move on to Coral Bay.