The Coral Coast of WA stretches from Exmouth down to Cervantes (2h drive north of Perth). We arrived in Exmouth at 8pm with Sam and Mick, after a long 10 hours drive from Point Samson and the wind was howling! Lots of fun setting up the camper in the dark struggling against the wind, and the night wasn’t much better with everything banging and clanging, not much sleep at all. But we were not about to let this dampen our spirit and set off to explore the coast.
Exmouth is the gateway to the Ningaloo Reef Marine Park. The Reef is much smaller that its eastern cousin, the Great Barrier Reef, with only 260 km, but it has the advantage of being much closer to the shore, even accessible just by swimming in several spots. It is still very dry in this region (seems like most of WA is) and there is not many tree, mainly bushes. Even though we were quite late in the season there were still a few specimen of the famous Australian Wild flowers (hopefully we’ll get to see more as we drive south), the views from the Lighthouse are breathtaking and the surf was up that day with big waves breaking on the reef.
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| View from the lighthouse |
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| Wild Flowers |
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| Sam and Mick at the lighthouse |
Next we checked out the snorkeling spot and decided to brave the chilly wind and go for a dip at the site “Oyster stack”: coral bommies just off the shore with beautiful colours and multitudes of tropical fish as well as a few Giant Trevally. Over the next few days we snorkeled two other good spots: Turquoise bay and Lakeside where we saw more of the same but also turtles, red emperors, snappers… We also explored the beautiful beaches on the eastern side of the peninsula: White sand, turquoise water, turtles furtively popping up. Exmouth is really beautiful, it would be an ideal place to live if it wasn’t for the 50° in summer! A little too many flies too, on one beach we actually had to wear the head net because they drive you nuts by sticking to your eyes, nose and lips!
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| Pete fishing |
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| Turquoise Bay |
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| white sand, turquoise water as far as you can see |
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| Pete snorkeling Oyster Stacks |
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| Emus in the national park |
Pete and Fletch rented a tinnie and went fishing for half a day. Even though they didn’t get many bites, they brought back some mackerel for dinner. They also lost a real giant fish - maybe a Sailfish - that snapped the line and saw heaps of whales.
The four of us also went for a celebratory feast at the Whalers restaurant on Sam and Mick last night and Pete and Mick shared a giant seafood platter. We decided to stay a little longer in Exmouth and got a great gift from both our mums: 1 week in a cabin at the Lighthouse Caravan park minutes away from the beach. Absolute luxury for us! A real kitchen with shelves and drawers and a real fridge! Our own bathroom and toilet! No more sleepless nights because of the wind! It was fantastic. Thank you Mummies. Our week was leisurely spent, between the eastern beaches for a nice swim and more snorkeling on the Reef.
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| Our cabin |
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| Groomed up Mick, Sleepy Pete and Beautiful Sammy |
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| Our view from the cabin |
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| Best seafood pasta ever at Pinocchio's |
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| Our shell collection is growing |
Next we went to Coral Bay, a tiny tourist village 150 km south and also adjacent to Ningaloo Reef. There we did a bit of 4WD in the sand dunes and almost got stuck a few times. I really thought we wouldn’t make it up one of the dunes, but slowly, VERY slowly, we crawled up. It would have been quicker to walk up really but what’s the fun in that! We had our lunch stop at Oyster Bridge, a little snorkeling spot, nice but the chilly wind chased us away real quick.
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| getting ready for the sand dunes |
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| Oyster Bridge |
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| Lunch Break.. |
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| ...with a little friend |
The highlight of our week in Coral Bay was meeting Craig and Wilma, our camping neighbours who had a beautiful boat and took us out to the reef to go snorkeling and fishing. It was great fun and in such a confortable boat. Pete got to drive it most of the way and you could see little stars sparkling in his eyes. We looked for Manta Rays but unfortunately didn’t spot any. I still haven’t seen these amazing creatures up close and it seems it won’t happened during this trip either. Too bad. But we got quite a few fish for dinner: a type of Mackerel. It wasn’t too bad but the best fish was caught a couple of days later by Wilma when Pete went fishing again with them: a Bald Chin Groper. Absolutely delicious, it tastes a little like Parrotfish. We did more snorkeling in Coral Bay as well and we saw plenty of pretty big emperors and snappers.
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| Pete's new Toy |
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| Both happy to be out on the water |
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| School Mackerel |
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| Ningaloo Reef |
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| Paradise...... |
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| Coral Bay |
The next stop was Carnarvon, 2h30 south of Coral Bay, for a grocery and petrol refill and then we left straight away on the unsealed road going 150 km north along the coast (ironically back toward Coral Bay but it doesn’t link). We first stop to check out the blowholes and even though the sea wasn’t too rough that day we saw some pretty good blows. We checked a little fishing settlement nearby where camping was only $5/night but with its decrepit shacks and permanents living there it looked a little too much like a shantytown to our taste (how precious are we!) so we went on towards Quobba station. The station is set in a magnificent and rugged landscape, with tall rocky cliff falling abruptly in the ocean and little sandy cove in between. We opted to stay at the site call Red Bluff, on the northern part of the station and went for a day trip further north, on the next station, Gnaraloo, famous for its mythical surf break which is part of surfer’s west coast pilgrimage since the 70’s. There wasn’t enough surf while we were there though so we had to be content with the beautiful coastline. We would have happily stayed a few days there but between the howling wind (=noisy night and hard to cook) and a recent fly invasion - I’m talking dozens of them buzzing around you all the time and entering eyes, nose and mouth, a real nightmare - we cut it short and continue our trip south.
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| Passing the tropic driving south |
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| Welcoming sign on the road to Quobba! |
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| Blowholes |
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| That's salt deposit on the rocks by the blowholes |
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| Shantytown |
Next post: Monkey Mia.
