Coral Bay-Exmouth-Yardie Creek Camp

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Coral Bay- Exmouth - Yardie Creek.
The road from Coral Bay to Exmouth is hot and dry, small green shrubs and large termite mounds dot the country side.
As we got closer to Exmouth we saw glimpses of blue ocean. We drove through dry river beds with 2-4metre measurement posts, obviously in the wet season the area floods.
To the West is the Cape Range National Park
Exmouth is situated 1270km north of Perth with a population of approximately 2250 permanent residents.
Discovered in 1618 by Dutch Captain Willem Janz, the first documented European landing on Ningaloo Reef. In 1818 the English Captain Phillip Parker King surveyed the northern coastline and called the area Exmouth, after his hero Viscount Exmouth, also mentioned in the Horatio Hornblower novels.
Exmouth has been a base for the Royal Australian Navy and Air Force personnel since WW2 when the US Navy established a submarine base under the code name 'Operation Potshot'.
The area was actually bombed by the Japanese during the war but no damage was sustained.
In 1963 the US and Australian government established a Very Low Frequency Communication Station, escalating the Cold War and establishing Communications with US submarine nuclear warheads.
In 1967 the town and the Communication Station were both official opened by Harold E Holt.
The town today appears to be developing at great speed, with a very new water front marina precinct and a very large shopping plaza being developed.
We visited the Caltex for fuel and the information. The information area had a giant prawn and a very interesting 'emu muster' area. Emu's in town obviously becoming a problem at times.
We shopped for the basics bread, milk, fishing bait and tackle in the main part of town, which is a nice little mall area.
We had lunch in the newly refurbished Federation Park that had a free water park and a swimming pool.
6 emus just wondering the park freely,

All stocked up we drove out of town past the Australian Government VLF communication centre, where the main tower is the 2nd tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere., standing 387.9 meters high, weighs 800 tons and can with stand 500km per hour winds. The main tower is surrounded by 12 slightly shorter support towers.
On to Yardie Creek Camp, we travelled the Cape Range National Park, spectacular rugged limestone ranges with breathtaking canyons on the East and 60km's of pristine beach on our West (Ningaloo reef)
We stopped in at the Milyering Discovery Centre where there was a wealth of information on the National and Marine Park.
Our aim was to increase our camp time at Yardie Creek having booked earlier it appeared that just 3 night was not enough. All organised we drove on to Camp.
On arrival we checked in with the lovely camp hosts and set up.
The camp area has very few trees, is slightly sheltered by the dunes and has only 10 camps, right on the beach where the creek meets the sea.

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