The boys all went for an early dive before breakfast and pack up. This was a good move because the wind arrived after that and was here to stay. We moved on but never found a spot to camp along the coast where we thought we would. Once you leave Cape Range National Park, you’re on private land – Ningaloo Station. Whilst they allow camping at designated places on their land, you first have to get a key to all the locked gates ($150 deposit), bring your own chemical toilet, and then return to the homestead to take the key back. All a pain in the neck really when you’re on a really bad road. Their sites looked pretty uninviting from outside the locked gates, and the wind was a screaming offshore nightmare that made anything to do with sand seem like torture.
Above is a part of Cape Range, and that’s not smoke blowing around. It’s sand coming off the dunes.
As you can see, this is pretty desolate country, and whilst it is a pastoral lease, the only animals we saw were goats. This place suits them quite well.
We also saw heaps of emus including the one in the photo below with about 15 young chicks. (Mum – click on the photo to make it bigger so you can see the baby emus)
Mother Emu and her many chicks
The road started out very rough and badly corrugated. It was 100km into Coral Bay, and we thought the road would improve. It didn’t. Thanks John for plodding away at the driving job for the day. It took well over five hours to go 100km. Long way when you go that slow, big day.
Arriving in Coral Bay we had one of our latest lunches looking over the bay full of coral. Coral Bay has just one street with two caravan parks and a new place called Ningaloo Resort. There’s a few shops too. The caravan parks are chock full of long term Nomads. I overheard the receptionist taking a booking for July next year.
Luck was on our side today and we got the only free site in town. Coral Bay is in a Sanctuary Zone, so we went south through the sand dunes to find somewhere to spear fish.
The tide was low and some of the coral was exposed.
These quad bikes came zooming past – gave me quite a surprise. Can you imagine Surfcoast Shire giving a permit for this at home!!!!!
It was a lovely hour or so on the beach for me, and the boys got two good sized fish for dinner. So I am officially eating my words about John’s spear gun. Turns out, it was just the rubber stretchy thing that was a problem. We got that replaced in Exmouth, so it’s all go now.