Cape Range National Park

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Sunday 4^thAugust

Today we had a relatively short drive from Coral Bay, through Exmouth and around the top of the peninsular to Yardie Homestead Caravan Park where we caught up with David and Mary again. This park has a Sunday Roast for $20.00/head, so we had asked David to book us in for dinner. Lucky he did the previous day as the seating was sold out by the time we arrived.

We chuckled over the serving and presentation – real country style, but any short comings here were lost in the taste of a good roast dinner followed by lemon sponge pudding. It was definitely LEMON and sharp. Marg and I love that sharpness, so we were well satisfied.



We had also used this time reviewing what to do on Monday, and as you will see, the result was an adventurous day.



If you are planning to visit this part of WA, you MUST book accommodation. The place is chocker with not-mads, many itinerant like us, others following the northern winter migration for 3 to 6 months.



Yardie Homestead is just a little north of the Cape Range National Park, a large area that has taken over former farm stations on the land, and has large marine sanctuaries along the Ningaloo Reef. (Coral)



Monday 5^th August

As per our plan, we set out south into the National Park early so that we could get good parking at Yardie Creek where the sealed road ends. The plan worked well! There was a big queue of people buying day passes to get into the National Park when we got to the gates. We stopped, pointed to our annual pass sticker on the window, and drove on south.

The drive was cruisey (80k limit) until a wallaby dived out onto the road just in front of us. Good brakes and a quick a swerve and one wallaby safely crossed the road under turbo power!

We were making good progress when a kangaroo tried the same trick, but with less warning. Hard braking, wife gasping and just the tail tickled and he bounded off with a sore tail. OUCH!!! Sorry about that mate.

The next hazard was a small frilly lizard, but he had plenty of space to spare.



The Cape Range National Park has a great mixture of interests for visitors, and these are well presented at the tourist info centre in the park. The coral reef here is home to a great variety of sea creatures, and probably most famous for swimming with the whale sharks. For those that don't dive or snorkel, there is a new video featuring Ningaloo Reef - just brilliant photography. We bought a copy to play as a screen saver on the TV when standard programs bore.



The range is in an arid area, so don't expect to find much water. In fact Yardie Creek on the west side is the only flowing water. This is a great place to visit and observe the wild life. Black footed wallabies are in the rocks - we saw their 'calling cards' (droppings) and some folk in the caravan park visited late afternoon and saw some in the distance.



As we were walking into the gorge we could see a large bird of prey sitting on a rocky outcrop. Fortunately for us it was content to stay for a photo. We looked to see if there was a nest in the rocks, but failed to locate it. Until we looked at the pictures we were not sure what the bird was. This area is home to osprey, and that seems to agree with the pictures. We found other birds such as the corellas had nests in the rock holes, and some egrets and herons had their nests tucked behind the trees.



The colours of the rock face in the gorge are just so iron rich. We enjoyed scrambling up the rocky paths to get our photos. The volcanic rock on the southern side is full of holes, large and small. In some, little rock gardens have formed where the plants survive on just a little captured trapped water.



We returned home via Turquoise Bay and a little further north the Tantabiddy boat ramp. We also stopped into the visitor information centre, and noted that high on top of a communications tower was a large twiggy nest. We watched for a while and a parent osprey came and fed the chick(s?) before moving away to a close by observation point. Another WOW moment on a busy and very satisfying day. Look closely at the pictures and you will just see the white top of the chicks head. Why is the photo fuzzy? Well, the bird is a long way away and I have used maximum zoom to take the shots, hand held.

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Photos

Communication Tower
Visitors centre - Note the galahs and corellas on the wires. Osprey nest is on top.

Comments

[DARRYL AND LEE]

Hi guys haven\'t caught up for a while it looks beautiful where you are you on the coast? We are heading off to the snow on the 17/8 the day after the Annual Karawatha Chaplancy golf day. Taking Declan and dahlia

[Jakii H]

Cape Range
What a beautiful place, the colours and the birds,just lovely----love Jakii