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We just had a beautiful long weekend up at Coral Bay. We took the easy way out and flew the 2 hour journey rather than drive the 14 hour roadtrip. We've driven up to Coral Bay before and although I love our sunburnt country, there is a whole lot of nothing that wont keep toddlers entertained lol! I'll add a photo of the red dirt and scrub that lines the journey...although i did get some great views of Monkey Mia/Denham which is also wonderful to see.

Coral Bay is a one street town that comes in off the main 'Great Northern Highway' and ends at the southern tip of the Bay. Nigaloo Reef is an amazing reef that is right on the beach! So... just wading around in the water when tide is in you have 2 foot long snapper swimming around, lion fish, little sting rays and heaps of other amazing sea creatures all amongst your legs :)) For the amatuer swimmer or for kids this is absolutly amazing. We also went snorkelling out over the deeper water and paddled around on kayaks and the fish and coral is wonderful to see so close to the edge of the beach. At 3.30 every day there is a National Park organised feeding of the fish which is great fun for kids and tourists alike as the fish really came in and were quite aggressive in going after the pellets.... i loved it too and we went every day :)

Coral Bay is a really small town with two caravan parks, a motel, a petrol station and a small shop and bakery all along the one road. We stayed at the Bayview Caravan Park which is HUGE. They had over 1800 people staying there for the long weekend. We had a 2 bedroom chalet and it is definitly the nicest, cleanest and most modern of any caravan park accomodation we have had in WA. In saying that, it was double the price of any other caravan park in WA lol! The closeness of the town is excellent and it was so easy to walk to the bakery for lunch, or to the pub for dinner, or the beach for sunset, and the pool in the afternoon. It was only about 28 degrees each day but it was perfect weather...nice enough to go swimming but not hot enough to 'need' to go swimming ;)

If youre not happy with just snorkelling or doing not much, coral bay has heaps of tourist stuff. There are glass bottom boats and tours that take you snorkelling further out into the roof, there is scuba diving tours, deep sea fishing tours, whale viewing tours and the most famous for coral bay - snorkelling with whale sharks. You divers are going to kill me though, we didnt do it. It is whale shark season and there was approx 3 a day but at $375 pp and having to go one at the time so the other could look after the kids, we figured it was an event for next time. Instead, we went out Quad biking! We went all over the dunes and ruther along the coast, viewed turtles from a lookout and snorkelled at a great reef spot otherwise impossible to get too.

We were only gone 4 nights but it really feels like we had a holiday and went somewhere quite different. I think the lack of any stress of any sort, the kids being entertained the entire time and really just relaxing was a great winter breakaway :)

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