April 19 - 23 - Karijini, Coral Bay & Exmouth (Day 347 - 351)

 

620km

Monday 19 April

We woke nice and early so that we could make a good head start on our drive to Coral Bay today. The countryside out here is still pretty red, not so much just red sand but a lot more rock mixed in with it and fairly flat in some spots and mountainous in others.

We came across some really pretty spots that had
the perfect lighting so we had to stop and take some photos.

 

We travelled for a few hours through the countryside before stopping to have breakfast.

Not long down the road we reached the North West Coastal Highway and pulled into Nanutarra Roadhouse. This was a familiar place from a few years ago. A little packet of Magic Fire Dust sparked Jude's interest and he bought some with his pocket money. Sound like it could be quite fun.

The road from the turn off to go either south to Coral Bay or north to Exmouth had lots of roadworks happening. I think in total it was about 42kms of 60kph which meant it would take us longer to get to Coral Bay but never mind at least they are making the road a little wider and better.

Camped at Coral Bay Caravan Park

We arrived around 2pm at Coral Bay but it wasn't what we were expecting for a town. It was more like a huge caravan park that took up most of the street with a few shops and restaurants/cafe's to support the caravan park, another slightly smaller caravan park down the road, and a bit further down some dirt tracks leading off to the beach and another road to a self serve petrol station. I think we were expecting something a bit more like Geraldton or Exmouth. 

A few years ago we had camped at Warroora station right near the beach which is about 60km south of Coral Bay town but didn't even go into Coral Bay itself so this was quite a surprise. 

We prefer camping on our own if we can because we enjoy the space and quiet or if we make some noise from having a good laugh we aren't bothering anyone else but in this caravan park we are all packed in like sardines. Anyway we are here more to enjoy the snorkeling along the Ningaloo Reef so that is what we will do.

The weather has been getting hotter so once we had set up we heading for the pool to cool off before doing some school & business work. We hadn't been able to do much work because of no signal in Karijini so need to do a bit of catching up.

Tuesday 20 April

The aim this morning is to do a bit of snorkeling for a few hours and then come back and do school and business work. Bek wasn't feeling great so we left her to catch up on school work while we went with the boys.

The water is just so blue is beautiful. Some of my favourite colours.

I don't think the snorkeling was as good as I remember from last time but it may have just been the day or just the spot but it was still enjoyable enough and we did get to see some lovely looking sea creatures. I may actually be thinking of when we snorkelled at Exmouth that was very impressive so we'll see what we find up there.

I later look Bek out girly shopping at the nearby shops after lunch as she was feeling slightly better now and hadn't been able to get out with us to come snorkeling. She was hoping to get some sort of shirt as a souvenir but soon realised these sorts of places are pretty expensive so she settled for a new necklace.

Then it was back to the van to get some more school work done for the afternoon. We later had a swim in the pool again to cool off and more work to be done before moving on again tomorrow.

Wednesday 21 April

We needed to be packed up and out of Coral Bay by 10am and make sure we got to Exmouth Post office before close of business as we need to pick up a small parcel for Greg. 

We've been reading through the daily readings each morning either in the van when we are stopped and staying for a few days but when we are on the move we try to do them once we are all packed up and on the road. It's been good to be able to chat with the kids about all sort of topics that come up and explain the different principles we can put into our every day life. I'm very thankful to have a hubby that can explain it so well to all of us.

We got to Exmouth Post office just before lunch and thankfully Greg's parcel was there.

Found some pretty amazing magic cream.

 

We then did some food shopping and walked to a nearby camping shop looking for some more butane which we needed to be able to fill our gas burner which is proving hard to find. Well with the right fitting anyway.

We then drove further into town to go to another hardware store to exchange our gas bottle and get some butane. This time we managed to find the right thing but it didn't come with different size nozzles so hopefully it will be the right one.

Getting all our bits and pieces seems to take forever but finally we were back on the road to Yardie Homestead. We know this is a nice place and it was also the only place we could get into. Everything else seemed to be booked out.

What service. :)

Once we got to Yardie Homestead the lady gave us a choice of a few different sites so we could go and check them out and then let her know. We drove around and picked a site we liked. Once we had set up I then started to walk over to the office to pay and along came a man on a golf buggy. I put my thumb out as a joke to hitch a ride, not expecting for him to pull up and say 'jump on!'. He asked if I needed to go to the office and  I said yes so off we went. He said it was part of their service now because it's quite a walk to the office and also hot so if they happen to see someone they'll offer a ride.

Because it was so hot once we'd set up we made a bee line for he pool to cool off.

Thursday 22 April

Today we did some school and business work in the morning and then visited the Oyster Stacks in the afternoon so that the tide was right to be able to see more and boy did it deliver. We skipped this last spot last time for some reason not to sure now what that reason was but I'm sort of glad in a way because it means we had some more to discover this time. 

 

As soon as you stepped off the rocks here and looked under water you saw all sorts of beautiful fish straightaway. I think you'll get the idea from the video but it was just so lovely. Totally recommend a visit here if you ever get the chance.

We snorkeled for a couple of hours and then headed back to Yardie Homestead for dinner and the evening. We all really enjoyed our snorkel it was definitely worth the visit.

Friday 23 April

Our routine the last couple of mornings has been to get up have a coffee, breakfast a quick swim to cool off then sit and do work for a number of hours until around lunch, have lunch and then make our way out to some other swim spot to do a bit of snorkeling.

Today our spot to snorkel was at Lakeside which I'm pretty sure we did last time we were here as I remember the walk out to our spot which was over some rocks and around a corner and a bit further along the beach. This beach has a bit of current to it so you need to walk up the beach a bit in the opposite direction to the current and then let it drift you down and you enjoy the snorkel as you go. This time the current wasn't as strong but as time went on while we were here the waves did become quite choppy to it got quite tiring so wasn't as enjoyable. We didn't see as much as at Oyster Stacks but we still saw some pretty cool fish and one huge fish in particular.

We swam for about an hour, Matt lost one of his reef shoes here somehow. He was playing some game with it and let go of it. We searched high and low for it for a little while but it was nowhere to be found. Very unusual for it to just disappear seeing as it's all black but anyway.  We then made our way back to Yardie Homestead for the night. 

-- Mim