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Published: November 6th 2009
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Day 189 - Coral Bay
Beautiful day, beautiful dawn - not that we were up early enough to see it but we didn’t laze around in bed for too long, it’s just too hot!
Coral Bay is a beautiful little place that was only established in 1968 with a small settlement immediately put together with tourism in mind. The main attraction here is Australia’s only fringing coral reef where for much of the coast line you can walk out to the stunning array of brightly coloured marine life. It’s very special indeed. There is nothing here to distract you from the beautiful surroundings though, no mass shopping arcades, no funky nightclubs, no flashing lights. What it does have hopefully compliments the fabulous coastline and at the moment it seems to be growing at a steady rate although there are signs that a resort is in the pipeline which would probably be a shame. It’s only a small place, there’s not a lot of room to cram thousands of people in here - if they do that it really will become Crowded Coral.
We hit the showers early this morning for a refreshing shower, salt water style! As a
part of the Gascoyne region, Coral Bay is a remote, dry location and despite lounging on the ocean it is classified as dessert. Fresh water is as valuable as fuel here, probably more so in reality because the only providers are local private land owners who use a reverse osmosis technology. This pumps hot, salty water from ‘huge reserves available to the area’, allows it to cool and settle before removing all impurities by reverse osmosis. Unlike most other caravan parks we’ve been to through Australia, neither of the Coral Bay parks have hook up drinking water taps on site. There are drinking water taps dotted around but if you want to fill your tanks up you need to go off site and pay $1 per 10 litres but the first 20 litres are free. The hot, salty water is coming from the 830 metre deep artesian bore and is not suitable for drinking or washing cars but the saltine couch grasses throughout Coral Bay are conditioned to the water so it’s not burnt or killed off and the area, in parts is leafy green! The long and short of it is that the showers are salty too and it’s
weird but we’re getting used to it!
All too soon the day has come for the Elliotts to head off for their WWOOFing experience at the Williambury station, we’re very sad to be saying our goodbyes today but they’re not rushing off straight away! They very kindly give us a little Nemo character to sit with the Beanie Kids, Mousie and of course Sydney (with a Y) from Cairns and there’s a card which is beautifully written and just gorgeous. It’s now attached to the wall in the caravan for us to read when we need to seek inspiration! But we still have some time left with them so get down to having a bit more fun!
Having purchased our $15 lotto ticket yesterday we needed to check the 25 lines for the winning numbers! Everyone joined in to help with the check as I called the numbers one by one. There was no huge shout unfortunately, we hadn’t won the big prize but at least we’d help somebody else in securing their dreams!!
There’s still time for everyone to head down to the beach for a bit of a relax, a snorkel and a walk along
to the shark nursery further around the bay. The beach here is beautiful, when isn’t the Indian Ocean stunning with its turquoise blue waters? There are even shade areas for families to sit under but we’re a bit too late in the day to grab one of them so we make do with a nice spot further along the beach!
The bravest of us, the Pommes, are the first to hit the water! It’s pretty chilly in fairness but everyone has a go and the snorkelling is really good. The coral here is like a great big sunken rose garden with some fish thrown in for good measure! It still amazes us how it’s all so different in each place we go to. There are plenty of the bigger trevallion fish here and there’s always something different to find in this underwater world!
Once we’re out in the sun again we soon warm up and there’s enough time for a walk along the beach towards the shark nursery near Skeleton Beach. When we get there we count thirty sharks within 10 feet of the shore line, beautiful! The area seems to be really important in the life cycle of the black tip and the white tip sharks, as such people are asked not to enter the water or disturb the sharks in any way. Despite us desperately wanting to snorkel here we resist temptation and we don’t even get into the water past ankle depth so the photos aren’t as clear as they could have been but the sharks were undisturbed by us so that makes up for it!
It’s really time for the Elliotts to be on their way now so we head back to camp and wave them off. What a beautiful family, love, love, love and we’re sure it won’t be too long before we see them again. And it wasn’t! Their car was playing up! Ten minutes after they’d driven out of the park they were back again to unhitch the camp trailer and figure out what was causing their ABS warning light to flash up on the dashboard. We suspected a flat battery and seemingly after a bit of a charge from good old PIE, the Holden sprang back into life. They were back on their way towards the farm but the all round second hugs were worth the return visit!!
So what to do with ourselves for the rest of the day? Well, we’d talked about doing one of the marine tours while we’re here with the Reeves family so myself and Simone went off to see what sort of deal we could come up with!
Top of the list came the Coral Bay Wildlife Adventure where we might be able to swim with Manta Rays, see Humpback Whales and we snorkel at a couple of outer reef sites. It didn’t take us long to establish that we weren’t going to get any money off but at least we’d tried and the rate was already discounted from the peak season price so it wasn’t too evil! We booked up, paid up and got kitted out with wet suits ready for the off in the morning!
Darryl cooked up a great sausage casserole for us all tonight, the kids were pooped and so were we. A reasonably early night was in order - we’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow!
Dar and Sar
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