Some (necessary) time out of the water

We'd deliberately budgeted ourselves a full day off in Coral Bay following our whaleshark adventures to relax, snorkel from the beach, make use of the facilities and generally soak up as much of the atmosphere as we could before hitting the road again.

Unfortunately for us and the many others in town, a confused crocodile decided to drop by (200kms further south than any had been seen for a decade), forcing the more sensible among us to stay out of the water.































Not everyone heeded the warnings of course. There's a lot of crazy Europeans around at the moment, particularly Germams, who've spent a lot of money getting here and they're not going to be put off by a 5m saltwater croc. And in any case, there's plenty more in the water that can eat you up or paralyse your central nervous system so you drown.

Luckily things had cooled down somewhat and with plenty of shade around we got in some good reading time and took the opportunity to observe some of the land based wildlife, including this goanna, and some small fast moving dragons.

That's not his tongue sticking out by the way. We're pretty sure it's the tail of his last meal.

They finally eliminated the threat of the croc on Monday afternoon around 5pm some 30kms south of Coral Bay. According to DEC it took one shot and he sank without a trace. Happy hour at the Coral Bay Hotel starts at 5.30 so I've got a different theory to what really happened.

























The Coral Bay Hotel is a top spot to finish the end of any day and we made sure we dropped in for a few on each of the six nights we were in town. We had a relatively flash meal out on our last night in town (accompanied with wine from a bottle) to celebrate what had undoubtedly been the best (and most anticipated) week of our trip.

But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and on Saturday we packed up our gear, filled up with diesel and headed up the coast on the Cardabia-Ningaloo 4wd track. Given it was the easter long weekend we were a little nervous about finding a spot to stay as Coral Bay was full, as were the national park campsites north of Yardie Creek.

First stop of the day was the Lagoon. We both had pretty high expectations, stoked by locals raving about the place, but I think we must have hit it at the wrong tide. Our trip to the Lagoon did though provide us with the opportunity for some extended sand recovery practice to get the troopie back over the large soft sand dune we'd flown down on the way in. Momentum and low tyre pressure are the keys to keeping things going in sand but with an almost non-existent run up and some extremely soft deep sand we really struggled.

The most important thing to do in a recovery situation is to get out of it before anyone else comes along. Provided no other day trippers came along we had around six hours before the sunset all-terrain vehicle tour came from Coral Bay. In the end it took around a quarter of that time, some hauling of big flat rocks from the beach to plug the numerous holes I'd spun with the rear wheels and Ness letting the tyres down to 15psi.













What went down had to go back up again once we were clear of the trouble and the compressor proved its worth once more. All benefit of the shower we'd had a couple of hours before was lost, and the next opportunity for one wasn't to be for another four days.

As we'd been warned, the track was pretty corrugated and slow going but it afforded lots of great uninterrupted views of Ningaloo reef. There were also lots of bush camping opportunities so we were less concerned about finding somewhere to hide out for the long weekend.





We ended up spending the first two nights on Ningaloo Station. Our camping book had said you needed a chemical toilet to camp here but no questions were asked and there was plenty of places to hide in the dunes for number twos and you had the shovel handy to deal with any snakes. A snake did come through our camp shortly after we arrived so we were a bit nervy on that score.

We'd been promised some solitude but ended spending the first night in the company of some kite surfers who were camping upwind of us and had their one Red Hot Chili Peppers CD on repeat. At least that was all they played for the first six or so hours. Around 11.30pm the volume was suddenly trebled and on came some pretty decent doof music, which normally I would have loved. However given we'd both been asleep for a couple of hours, I did as Nessa asked and went over in my underpants to tell them to keep things on the down low. My deranged hair and beard has some plus points which I'm slowly discovering and despite me being outnumbered four drunks to my one they turned things down straight away and were pretty apologetic about everything.

The second night we did get our solitude as the kite surfers moved on.

We were treated to some top astro action and shooting stars before the just full moon rose and ruined the show.

The wind was starting to pick up and there wasn't much shelter so we decided to take our chances and push on further north.


We wanted to check out the Yardie Creek crossing which would take us into the north section of Cape Range National Park (also accessible by sealed road from Exmouth, so was going to be busy). It's crossable with care at low tide, which unfortunately for us was pretty close to sunset so we decided to give it a miss and went back to the Boat Harbour campsite.
















The BIG plus of Boat Harbour was the massive sand dunes which offered great protection from the consistently strong southerly. There was also a well protected beach with a baby blacktip reef shark patrolling the shallows in search of some food. Amazingly (for the easter long weekend) there was not a soul around and no sign of Mr Ranger to collect the camping fees. Our total expense for the four nights was $20, which was almost 99% down compared with the prior six day cash haemorrhage of Coral Bay. The second derivative (or rate of change of the rate of change) which the world's economists are so hung up on these days was working in my favour after a poor run.

There wasn't much to do other than read, play a few games of yahtzee, two of boggle (until I unsportingly bailed) and try to cool off in the 28 degree water.













Late afternoon / everning cloud may have denied us of a good star show, but it did provide for amazing sunsets, on the second night in particular. Another few gigs of precious hard disk devoted to the setting sun.

We had a couple of day visitors but no one stayed the night. Andrew & Leanne from Perth dropped by on the second morning while I was recovering from a late onset hangover. They had an ex-prison service troopie which they were busily pimping and it was a good opportunity to compare notes. When I opened our bonnet we found we had a stowaway mouse on board, perilously close to the wiring to the all important solenoid. There was also some mouse poo in the cab this morning so I'm thinking I'll have to put some traps down.













Due to the late low tide, we made our way back to Ningaloo Station this morning and then back on the bitumen to double back up North West Cape to Exmouth. It was a good chance to recharge the auxiliary battery (fridge power) which is struggling a lot more with the heat. We used to plan on getting away with being stationery for four days but with the higher temps up here I think we're going to have to invest in some solar back up support. We'd rationalised the warm beers on day three at Red Bluff as resulting from a perfect storm of hot temps, no shade and too much warm stuff going into the fridge. We've both gotten used to living without many home comforts previously taken for granted. I draw the line at warm beer so we'll need to do something quickly or face heading back south to cooler conditions.

We're in Exmouth for four nights. Not a great spot but it's the gateway to some more underwater action on the northern Ningaloo reef. Tomorrow we're back in the water, heading off for two dives around the Muiron Islands. The enthusiasm of the Germans in the next camp who did that today has got us pretty excited for that. And on Friday we get to dive the world famous Navy Pier, just north of town, which was closed when we were here two years ago. It's the sixth best dive site in the world apparently, but we must have dived twenty or more of the top 10 sites in the world so we'll have to see. I'll leave Nessa to fill you in later in the week.

A sharky kind of day

*Pretty coral and fishes of Ningaloo.

Yesterday was whaleshark Wednesday. WOW!
What a day. I can't tell you how excited I was. We were at the shop bang on 745 to meet with our crew and fellow whalesharkers. A quick transfer to the jetty and onto the boat, our first "try" snorkel was at 920 on a grey reef shark cleaning station. This was good practice for anybody who hadn't snorkelled before in deep water and for people to get used to the procedures of getting into and out of the boat and how to fin etc. I'm sure that for some of the folks on board this was their first shark encounter, and I have to admit quite a full on one. If we approached quietly enough (hard with 22 anxious poeple in the water but we managed it) the sharks would continue with their hygiene habits. This involves hanging almost vertically in the water column baring their pointy white teeth for the cleaner wrasse to clean. With no problems in the water and our spotter plane due to take to the air any minute we all clambered back onto the boat to patiently await the big one.
Of course Ningaloo is not a zoo, and the whalesharks are wild animals so it takes a fair amount of coordination to locate and then arrive at a surfaced shark. There are days (rarely) when they don't see any. Not yesterday! The plane had been up about 40 minutes and we were just bobbing around on the outside of the reef and the word came - WHALESHARK!

We had about 20 minutes to get our gear organised, have a quick revision of whaleshark code of conduct and then we were in. The visibility was 35-40m, the water a perfect cobalt blue with the sun shining overhead. As we swam along in the blue with our hearts in our mouths the biggest spottiest fish any of us are ever likely to see appeared. Our first shark was 6-7m. Just beautiful.

We ended up having 4 swims with the sharks, some at the surface, sometimes they'd motor along about 10-20 metres underneath. The standout swim was undoubtedly the third. Swimming along with the shark in my sights I saw a fin on the surface of the water and you hear pinging under the surface. A dolphin! Now I have never had the honour of swimming with dolphins and this one was pretty close. It seemed to be very curious about the shark, although not fearful despite the size. The real thrill was when the shark started to ascend and the dolphin went down to meet it's head. WOW WOW WOW. Everyone in the water was absolutely stunned. I couldn't speak for minutes I was so choked up. There was lots of air punching and woohooing. The videographer was STOKED. In 10 years of running the operation the skipper had never seen anything like it.

*Whaleshark from above. The 3 previous images were not taken by my Sony cybershot but were traded to Andy by some Germans he helped with their computer. They are so clear and give you a better idea of what you're looking for/at when you get to my photos.

You get about 5-10 minutes each time you're in the water. There are lots of restrictions on how many people in the water on the shark and how long a boat can spend with a particular shark. The days of going for a ride on the back of a shark are long gone thankfully. Initially the whole sliding into the water and swimming over to the shark is a mass of confusion with people swimming over one another, combined with the anxiety of what you're about to do the adrenaline is really pumping. Even fin kicks to the head glance off relatively unnoticed.

I can't adequately explain how this adventure affected me. The photos say a lot. This is the biggest fish in the ocean, they are beautiful vegetarian sharks and they are captivating. I can see why the crew are so passionate about what they do. I think even non marine buffs would get a buzz out of this experience if you don't mind swimming in the big blue.

Andy became friends with David Attenborough yesterday so we messaged him and told him that we were off to swim with whalesharks. Pretty timely don't you think?

*Coral and convict surgeon fish.













*One of my shark shots. I did my very best to take loads of images but I was shooting blind as I couldn't see the shark through the screen. You're also not allowed to get any closer than 4m, swimming and puffing very hard. You get the idea though.








*Beautiful Ningaloo - staghorn coral and little fishes ,anthias I think. Much to Payniac's disbelief I didn't bring a single fish ID book.

*From the boat back to Coral Bay. Pretty nice.










*Pre whaleshark snap. Don't I look excited? Note that my dress is the same colour as the water.



*On the boat for whaleshark adventures.

*Below are 4 very blue photos that are better if you make them full screen. One includes dolphin-whaleshark interaction for the skeptics. There is also a little movie of the beautiful whaleshark swimming away. This was the last swim of the day and so I was a bit tired and maybe didn't keep up so well. Enjoy.











The day ended with a "wind-down" snorkel on a shallow bit of reef called Spot X. A very fishy and pretty spot. Andy & I had a few, as that was all we could manage after our very exciting day, beers and saw some of the other punters from the boat. All had grins from ear to ear.

And so tomorrow ends our holiday within a holiday at Coral Bay. We got some local knowledge from the skipper y'day about some amazing places to visit as we make our way 4wding up to Exmouth. The Lagoon was a place we'd heard of last time we were here but didn't have the vehicle to get there. The troopy will get us there. We are booked in to Exmouth caravan park from Tuesday as we have a bit more scuba to do on Ningaloo. Until then we will be back in the wild.

A couple of days in Coral Bay

We arrived in Coral Bay on Saturday and will stay until Friday making it our longest non-house stay of the trip so far.

*The sun goes down on the west coast.








*Sunset at the beach, Coral Bay.

We had been hyping ourselves up for this stay as we loved it when we were here about the same time of the year in 2007. As we approached the township (?) we started to get a little anxious about any big developments or changes that might be for the worst. Apart from some new staff quarters and a new jetty it all looks just like it did 2 years ago. We are back in paradise.


As Payniac mentioned in the previous blog we have #1 position in the caravan park, just a skip to the beach and the pub.



*A campground friend, some kind of dragon.



What makes this place so special? Ningaloo Reef is the simple answer. The reef is accessible from the beach which I can see from where I am sitting. When things get a bit hot, as it has been the last few days (max of 37-39C), I just pick up my mask & snorkel and go for a swim among the fishes. One of the major draw cards, and it was for us on our first visit, is it's one of the few places in the world where whalesharks, the biggest fish in the ocean, show up pretty routinely each year after the coral spawning which coincides with the March and April full moons. People flock here in their thousands to swim and snorkel with these gentle, plankton eating, spotty and so, so beautiful sharks. More on that later. Ningaloo doesn't just have whalesharks. There are green turtles, sea snakes, reef and tiger sharks, dolphins, dugongs, manta rays and humpbacks migrate past in the winter months. And your usual collection of hard corals and associated critters.

Our first full day in Coral Bay was spent swimming, reading, having a much needed wash (hadn't washed my hair since Kalbarri as I lost the shamp & cond), and doing loads of washing. A good thing about this dry heat is the washing is almost dry before you finish hanging it out. Enough of the domestics.Ended the day in the Coral Bay Hotel for a few obligatory cold ones and some fried seafood before getting an early night for Manta Ray Day!
Andy & I booked ourselves on the Manta Ray interaction tour plus a couple of scuba dives. I could barely sleep. I think I was awake by 530am worried I was going to miss the whole thing. We didn't need to be at the shop til 830am. We began the day with a really easy, gentle dive. Lucky, cos Andy's computer failed (again) and we had to swim back to the boat and change his regulator over to one of the boat ones. We then found the rest of the group and continued our tour of 'Lotties Lagoon'. Andy's moustache also created some mask leakage issues but as you'll see from the photo he soon adjusted and became Andyfish of yore.
*Ugly? A frogfish by WA nomenclature. I had never seen one of these as we don't get them on the east coast or they're better at hiding themselves.











*A free swimming nudibranch, Elizabeths chromodoris I think. Sea slugs are one of my favourite little ocean animals and much easier to take pictures of than the fast moving animals like sharks. Ningaloo reef is a bit of a nudibranch hotspot so you'll likely be seeing many more slug pictures.








*Scuba Andy giving me the AOK...finally. If you haven't dived in a while there's a bit of pre dive anxiety and it usually takes about half of the first dive to get over the fact that you're still alive ( a bit like the first 20 dives after you learn) and then you can start to look around and enjoy the scenery in your weightlessness.









*A very cute little white (albino?) moray I found in a coral growth right under the boat. They have bad eyesight apparently and sort of come out at you to see if you're food or not, which makes for happy snappy. They're generally not aggressive so like most marine animals providing you don't antagonise them they're quite happy and a little bit curious.





After the first dive the skipper was in contact with the spotter planes who directed us to a nice shallow spot next to the drop off where about 15 mantas were feeding. Cool! Things on the boat then became quite hectic with people gearing up and awaiting the Go, Go, Go order. On which we all slid neatly into the water without splashing (yeah, right) and over to the swimmer who had his/her sights on a manta. The mantas were feeding which is why the images are so fuzzy, there was heaps of manta food in the water. What an experience! These are coastal mantas and are smaller than their oceanic counterparts with max size from wingtip to wingtip about 4.5m. Still a big fish! We had three pretty decent snorkels with them and I used up most of my camera battery and memory on the first when the water was at it's gloopiest. The third swim was incredible, I had a big girl swim right under me in less than 4m of water. She was so close I could clearly see the stripes on her attendant pilot fish - a tear was shed as I was completely and utterly overwhelmed by her.

*One of the better shots! You get the idea. I could have got a clearer image from google but this is our one, we were there, our memory.
Coral Bay also unique in being one of the few, if not the only, place in the world you can swim with manta rays year round in calm,coastal (as opposed to the big blue) waters. In most other places where mantas do their thing it's scuba only as you generally have to hang out at cleaning stations in the middle of the big blue - unless you get lucky of course (Dave & Jan). And so this experience is opened up to all comers, if you can float you can swim with manta rays.


*A little manta movie for your perusal. I called this one darth vadar. These guys can really motor when they want to and keeping up with them is quite hard work so please excuse the heavy breathing.



Tomorrow we (Wednesday) whaleshark so stay tuned for more big fishy adventures. We love Coral Bay!

Fishing action at Red Bluff

We've made it to Coral Bay, the destination of our first interstate trip together just over two years ago. That time we flew to Perth, jumped on a Skywest flight up to Learmonth and then drove the 150kms from the airport. This time it's taken us 27,000kms in a roundabout sort of fashion. By any measure the Pilbara is a long long way from anywhere.

Being in Coral Bay means that things are about to get very fishy indeed with underwater action locked in for Monday (Mantas and two scuba dives) and Tuesday (Whalesharks, the biggest fish of them all, and more scuba).

With all that excitement just round the corner we decided it was time to set up camp for a few days to relax and get our energy levels up. We'd been on the move every day for the nine days since leaving Perth and we both needed a break. We chose to have a holiday at Red Bluff, about 130kms north of Carnarvon. This was another tip from newlyweds Si & Charl and the sign as we entered the huge station property billed it as 'Nature at it's best'. Expectations were almost as high as the camping fees ($10 each per night) but we were not to be disappointed.

We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. The only other visitors to our part of the beach were the kids of the people who ran the shop (not open while we were there) and who managed the camping area. What a life. Education courtesy of 'School of the Air' and then a few hours in the water until it gets dark. One of the dads told me that it means their children are still children and don't get up to the things 'we' all did when we were at school.

Being a lateish (albeit extremely enthusiastic) developer in the bad vice department I didn't feel it appropriate to tell him how much fun I'd had catching up on the action when I finally flew the coop and how a weaker person may have lost the plot altogether with so much concurrent fun going on.













The Bluff itself offered us a little protection from the ongoing strong southerly wind. At least it did until the wind swung around to become a strong (and very hot) easterly. When the wind finally blew itself out on day three we soon realised just how effective it had been at keeping the bushflies to manageable numbers.

We both had to don our fly headnets and spend the remainder of the time until sunset looking and feeling like beekeepers. Thankfully the fly day shift was not replaced by an evening/night biting mosquito shift as so often seems to be case. This may have been because there was no nearby fresh water supply, or perhaps the later shifts (with their attaching penalty rates) have been axed, yet one more victim of the depression?

Importantly though there were some basic shade shelters on the beach and they were strong enough to support our hammocks so we spent most of the time reclining in comfort, reading our books (what better place to get stuck into Tim Winton's 'Dirt Music' again, pilfered from Leggie's spare room where I think I left it after first reading it five years ago), and watching the live Blue Planet doco unfolding in front of us in the water.

























There was almost non-stop action. Huge shadows of fish would work their way along the shallows until spotted and pounced upon by the patient terns. Shoals of larger fish would sporadically start jumping further out and would receive the same treatment.













Even groups of dolphins came in to join the action, working together to drive the fish further into the shore before munching them up.



























My favourite fishman of them all though had to be a very friendly Osprey who favoured the Trevally. Scooped them up with his big claws and then retired to one of the beach shelters to eat, before drying off in the sun and to mentally prepare for the next outing.

He truly was a magnificent bird of prey, and I felt very honored that he allowed me to get so close to watch all the action.













What more inspiration did I need to finally take the cellophane off our telescopic rod (a Christmas gift from Ken & Jean) and rig up one of the three spinners I'd picked up in Gerro?

I had almost instant success - and clean hooked a fine Trevally of good eating size. Unfortunately neither of us have any clue how to gut and clean a fish so I had to let it go. This is something I must rectify.

I managed to lose all three spinners, two on the reef which appeared at low tide, and the third when the line snapped when I was trying to land something a bit too big.

The nearest fishing shop was back in Carnarvon, a good two hours away on the dirt road and I would also have had to pack up the rooftop tent.

I really wanted to keep on fishing so of course I made my own rig out of part of my keyring, a ring pull from a XXXX can, and a couple of hooks. I managed to land another Trevally with that it too, but it was probably a poor return for the four hours I spent trying.

For our last night at Red Bluff we were treated once more to one of those sunsets that just keeps on going and going. A beautiful and memorably end to our stay. We even got to take our flynets off for the end of it.
















We left Red Bluff earlier than we'd planned this morning, simply to escape the flies. By necessity we had to take breakfast upstairs to bed for the first time. While I'm definitely getting more used to swallowing them (particularly when smoking it seems), I don't think I'll ever get used to them getting into my throat via my nose. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

En route we passed across into the Tropics. The Tropic of Capricorn is 23.5 degrees south of the equator. An odd number I thought so I looked it up.

It turns out the tropics are the furthest points from the equator where the sun is directly overhead at noon (which down here happens on the winter solstice). So now you know too.

We have bagged the best spot in the caravan park, overlooking the turquoise bay. Strictly there are no tents allowed in such an exposed spot due to the general cyclone threat, so we've been given a good cover story in case any of the tent campers get shitty with us (which apparently they will).

We're off to the Coral Bay Hotel for a few too many tonight. We have to stay off the sauce for the next few nights before our diving so waking up with a hangover tomorrow is a good way of making sure that happens!

Hope everyone is well, and I'll leave Ness to post the next update in a few days after our diving adventures!!!