Jul 2007

Friday, our last day in Coral Bay, was a lovely sunny day. We did not do much. Just enjoyed the day. Anne did some sewing. Brian tried to update the Blog but had a few techincal problems and could not complete it, hence the delay in publishing. The bakery was a good place to visit when things were not right so went and bought some cakes and came back to the van for tea and cakes, followed by a beer and wine.

Caravan parks are a wondeful mix of people. We met a New Zealand couple who were travelling from Perth to Darwin in a campervan over 4 weeks. They were farmers from near Christchurch. Another young couple were from Tasmania and had lived in a station wagon for the past 6 months as they travelled around Australia. There were numerous overseas visitors travelling around as well as those from all states of Australia.

Time to go.

Saturday we packed up and started the journey home. We drove back to Carnarvon and then pushed on and stayed overnight at the Neren Neren overnight stay area. That was about 500 kms travel for the day. There were about 14 other vans, campers or buses there. The stars were absolutely beautiful overhead. There was no light from any cities or other places so it was very clear. It rained a little bit that night. It was so quiet after the caravan parks.

On Sunday morning we packed up and headed off again about 10am. We had intended to come home via the coast along Jurien Bay, Green Head and Cervantes, but the weather forecast was for gale force winds so we decided to push on to home. We arrived home about 6:30 pm after travelling over 600kms for the day. On the way home we passed through 4 speed traps. Yes four. 3 were well spaced apart in the Muchea area and 1 in Bullsbrook. As well, there were two on the other side of the road in Muchea catching those gloing north. We have never seen so many speed traps in an area. Obviosuly trying to capture all the holiday travellers.

Over both days there was a lot of traffic heading north. We have not seen so many caravans and especially boats travelling along the roads. It is the start of school holiday time but still it was incredible how many cars, vans and boats were on the road. The road was very busy.

Even though the weather has not been great over the three weeks we were away we had a great time. We have had a relaxing time doing as we feel, meeting some more people and seeing some parts of WA that we have not seen before. Our meetings with people have encouraged us to get the shower and toilet in action in the van as well as put on an annex and invest in some solar cells. These will allow us to stay in some of the off-track sites that exist on our beautiful coast as well as being able to stay overnight in roadside stayovers as we travel around. There really is a great world out to discover and many great people to meet.

We set off on August 1 for our Canning Stock Route adventure. Unfortunately there will be no opportunity during that trip to update a blog as we are out of any communication service except sattelite phone for the period. When we get back we will produce a blog on the experience.

Till then we hope life is good for you.

Cheers from Anne and Brian

On Thursday we took a day trip up to Exmouth. Exmouth is about 160km north of Coral Bay. By the time we got home at 6pm we had done over 400km. That's some day trip.

Around Coral Bay there are a lot (hundreds) of termite mounds. They range in sizes. The ones in the picture are about 1.5 metres high. These are small compared with those in the very north that get over 2 metres tall.

Exmouth and surrounding areas are very nice. The town is packed at this time of the year with lots of caravanners and others taking advantage of the sun. The seas around Exmouth are very pretty with lots of beautiful coastline. The picture below is from Vlamingh Head lighthouse of the caravan park, coastline and in the background is the Harold E Holt Communication Centre. Vlamingh Head is about 20 kms or so north of Exmouth.

The area to the west of Exmouth contains the Cape Range National Park. This area is the north part of the Ningaloo Reef which starts south of Coral Bay where we are staying. There are heaps of lovely sandy beaches and although we didn’t do any, heaps of great snorkelling and fishing areas. There are many camp sites within the park although at this time of the year it is very busy. The pictures below are of Neds Camp and Turquoise Bay. They are absolutely beautiful.

We had hoped to get down to Yardie Creek station and Mandu as both these have lovely gorges with short walks. Unfortunately it took us until 4pm to get to Turquoise Bay and we had a 2 hour drive back to Coral Bay. We will have to come back again and spend a few days or a week up here as there is quite a bit to have a look at.

The drive to Coral Bay was pleasant. We stopped off at Minilya Station roadhouse and had lunch by the river. It was dry but the setting was nice.

We had sunshine through to Coral Bay however the clouds loomed. At Coral Bay the first night we had a fantastic sunset as you can see from the pictures below. During the night however it poured. Thank god we were in a van. Those in tents had a few problems. The water drained away very quick which was good.

We ran in Dave and Loris here so we caught up with them. They are here with a group of about 15 people. They are heading up to Yardie Creek which is another 80kms or so further north. Coral bay is quite a small place. It is quite lovely. It is well regarded for snorkelling and fishing. A fishing charter group had come in on the Saturday afternoon and that had heaps of beautiful fish. Boy it would have been nice to have one of them for dinner.

We haven’t done much here which suits this place. We went out on a glass bottomed boat over the coral and that was fantastic. The coral here is “hard” coral. It is not the really colourful coral that you see on the TV but still very pretty with majestic pieces of coral. These cabbage-like coral are over a metre in width. There were lots of fish around. It was very windy, cold and choppy out on the boat. Anne went for a snorkel and really enjoyed it.
We had a call from Laura today (Wednesday) saying that she had seen Anne on Getaway in the markets in Carnarvon. That was pretty amazing as we were only there on the previous Saturday and it was shown on the Wednesday.