23-08-13 to 25-08-13 Emu Creek Station to Yardie Creek CP

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23-08-13 to 25-08-13

Emu Creek Station to Yardie Creek Caravan Park

After a couple of very relaxing days at Emu Creek Station it was time to make our way to Cape Range National Park.

Getting a camp site in Cape Range NP is a little bit tricky, there are two ways you can do it, you can get online 48 hours before you wish to be there and book a site at 5 of the camp grounds, or you can line up at the Rangers station at 6am and hope that somebody is leaving the park so you can go in!

Lining up at 6am with only a chance that you might get a site didn’t really appeal to us, even though tow of the families we have been travelling with have been lucky, we didn’t really want to do this so as soon as we were back in service, I quickly got on the internet and booked a site, I could only get 1 night, but that’s ok because once you are in the NP, if you want to change camp grounds, you get priority over the people lined up at the gate, so I took the opportunity and quickly paid for that online to confirm the booking. This meant, we had 2 nights to fill in before camping in the NP. We decided we would head out to Yardie Creek Caravan Park, which is only about 15 – 20ks from the NP, and stay there for 2 nights. Mind you, the caravan park costs $35 a night and the National Park is only $14, this would be one of the attractions for spending more nights in the NP and less at the CP.

Once all settled, we took a little drive into a few different beaches and bays just to have a little look, and whilst standing on some rocks just looking into the ocean, a massive big green turtle had a little swim by. This was huge, and he was not for one minute concerned about our presence.

After lunch, it was time to test our new snorkeling gear, so we headed off to the NP, there are three main areas for good snorkeling, Lakeside, Turquoise Bay and Oyster Stacks. We had been told that Lakeside was very nice, so this was our choice for today. This experience was absolutely mind blowing; the variety of fish, the colors, the coral, and the list goes on.

After that, Pete thought it would be nice to do a little drive around and see if our friends had arrived, we had left them at Millstream, they all stayed a day longer than us, but when we left, and we were all going to be in Cape Range around the same time. After visiting a few campgrounds, we decided they weren’t here yet and headed back to camp. Well, who should have snuck in and set up camp right next to us, but the Woods family, unbelievable.

What a fun night we had catching up with where they had been and what they had done over the last couple of days.

Their plan of attack to get a camp site in Cape Range was that Mick would get up early the next morning and go and wait at the gate, hopefully get allocated a camp site and then come back and pack up and head on in.

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Photos

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an Osprey coming into land

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safe landing

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a Green Turtle just swimming on by

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some of the beautiful coast line at Cape Range NP