Coral Bay...

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Monkey Mia was great. Went out on a few cruises on at Cat boat and saw dolphins, dugongs (It's a cross between a dolphin and a seal) and turtles.

Ended up finding my way into the staff party circle. They are all travellers that just didn't leave some had been there 2 weeks others 2 years. Got offered a job to work on the boat but it's too small a place for me. So after getting very very very drunk with the staff and being given a personal tour of one persons caravan I decided to head off. I went to Carnarvon but it was like another ghost town so only stayed one night. I spent the night trying to share my sleeping bag with about 3 mosquito's...they won. My leg's look worse then some of the road kill here!

Speaking of road kill I had my first one on the way to Coral Bay, or should I say first 2. It was birds of all things. There are these little sparrow type birds that sit in the trees at the side of the road and when a car comes by they seem to play a game of chicken and try and dodge the cars. Well 2 of the four birds lost this game. One hit the windscreen and one hit the grill, I looked in my rear view mirror just in time to see them thud to the ground...it was horrible. I nearly hit an Emu too, I think it was contemplating suicide (obviously missing Rod) but it changed it's mind at the last minute. Thank god because an emu can do my van damage and I don't want to loose my $2000 deposit!!

Anyway next morning I headed off to Coral bay and I don't regret a minute of leaving early. Coral Bay is the second largest coral reef after the great barrier. The reef starts about 50ft from the beach. I have an extreme fear of being in water that I can't stand up in but I forced myself to do it and it turns out that yes I can swim and I can still breath with a snorkel on! It was AMAZING. I felt like I was in a tropical fish tank. Within minutes I had seen fish 2ft long, turtles, corals and stingray. After talking to a few people I have seen more in 30 mins off the beach they they have on snorkeling trips in 4 days.

The best bit was yesterday, it's whale sharke season here (the biggest fish in the world) and I went out on a tour to see them. Unfortunately our trip was the only one since the season began that didn't see any. Typical. Anyway I get to go again for free and I can't wait, you get in the water with them and swim along with them (don't worry mum they only eat plankton). We later went to a part of the reef where reef sharks go to get their teeth cleaned so I was actually swimming with sharks 2 meters below me...I thought I'd be freaked out but it seem so natural it was fab.

While we were on the boat one of the crew caught a few fish and I watched him whack it over the head with a stick then cut it up and I BBQ'd my bit for dinner it was soooo nice. So
i've decided to go on a fishing tour and I'm gonna try and catch, kill and cook my own dinner. Not sure if I'm up for the kill bit but I feel this is something I should do. I will keep you posted.

The March full moon has just passed and that means in a few day's the coral start to spawn, this only happens once a year and it is supposed to be really breath taking so I'm looking forward to it.

We've got a BBQ night here at the hostel tonight and I have an offer to join some guy's I met on the campsite for drinks later so i think tonight is going to be a late one. I will get the pics on soon but i'm using and net cafe instead of my laptop so it may be a week or so. I had an underwater camera for the sharks so I need to get them on disk too...I don't think I have the hang of taking photo's underwater yet so they're probably all a blur.

Till next time x

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Photos

Sunset Cruise
The sea was so still it looks like a lake