Day 88 19/06/2011 House Creek Bridge – Coral Bay, Western Australia

Day 88 19/06/2011 House Creek Bridge – Coral Bay, Western Australia

We’re back on the coast and unfortunately todays drive was not any more interesting than yesterday’s!!  Lots of nothing, wide open spaces, spinifex and nothing, we actually got excited when we saw a cow!!  

The kids are travelling well, for that we are grateful and today I was with them, trees and dirt!!  Every now and then Pete and I would notice that the vegetation or soil had changed slightly, but nothing significant until the turn off to Coral Bay when the soil went from fine red sand to beach sand!!  We were excited as we were looking forward to being back on the coast.

I was a little worried as we pulled into Coral Bay because we hadn’t booked a caravan site and we had been told that we wouldn’t get a site without booking, but booking ahead had been very challenging so we just decided to wing it.  The first caravan park I rang had one vacant powered site but it was in the pet section so we had to be happy camped next to people with dogs….Pete frowned at this so we moved onto the next caravan park.  This caravan park had one vacancy but it was on an unpowered site and we couldn’t use our generator, this wasn’t very good for us as the battery for our fridge and lights could only last about 3 days and we were here for 4!! So it was back to the park with the vacancy in the pet area!! How bad could it be??

Once we got settled in we quickly came to realise that our neighbours had a little “yapper” so it was without further ado that we changed into our swimmers, grabbed our snorkels and masks and headed to the bay for our first swim.  We detoured via the Tourist Information Centre to get advise on the best snorkelling spots and we were off.

The water was a little cold but we plunged in and were rewarded with a fabulous 150m drift snorkel, we all loved it.  We saw rays, blue gropers, spangled emperors, snub nosed darts, parrot fish, little blue neons, little school of longtoms, leather jackets, snapper and other fish that we did not recognise!!  The only thing missing was the camera!!  By the end of the snorkel Claudia and Callum had turned blue so we promised not to forget their spring suits tomorrow, I might even put mine on – just for sun protection!!.

Coral Bay is a beautiful seaside holiday haven on the end of Ningaloo Reef, honest the bay looks just like the pictures in the brochures and you can see where the waves break on the outer Ningaloo reef. The area offers great fishing, awesome snorkelling, diving and is a marine conservation area.  There are two caravan parks, each with a bar / restaurant, a small resort, a dive shop, a bakery and small supermarket.  If there is a residential area it is very, very, small.  But I could live here it truly is picturesque ….. can someone tell my boss I’m not coming back??.  Now just have to work out where to get a job and where will we live!! 

Back at the caravan park the kids quickly took off to the park to find their peers, all was going really well with Pete and I enjoying a couple of minutes of child free time until we heard the familiar cry of pain from Claudia.  She was being piggy-backed by Zac as she had hurt her foot running on the concrete and wow was she crying and there was blood everywhere!! But after tending to her wound we ascertained that she has almost pulled her toe nail off!! Ouch.  Having no idea how to treat this I have administered Panadol, hugs and wrapped the toe with multiple Band-Aids!! It seems to have worked.

Another fabulous day was had by all.