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Published: April 1st 2007
Watermelon Breakfast
Saving on the washing up we took to eating watermelon as it was intended.... Francois Peron National Park—Denham — Minilya — Carnarvon
Day 19 Tuesday 13-3-2007
Packed up camp after being inundated with ants and headed out of Bottle Bay back to Denham and thence onto Carnarvon. Got passed by two car carrying semi trailers on the way and listened to their interesting conversation on the two way radio—quite surprising for truckies it was only interspersed with the odd swear word. Rolled into Carnarvon looking like absolute ferals after 5 days or so out on Bottle Bay. Still they let us in.
With the kids enrolled in SIDE we are able to get various resources through their library— some of these are “talking books”. For traveling and for keeping kids (and adults!) amused these are just an absolute godsend. We are now all waiting on our next instalment of “The Quest of Deltora” !!! In the meantime we will have to listen to Harry Potter.
Carnarvon
Day 20 — Day 22 / Wednesday 14-3-2007—Friday 16-3-2007
Logistical day initially: shopping / washing / cleaning … you can run but you can’t hide. Still we cant complain too much as housework normally means sweeping out an area equivalent to a
6’ * 4’ trailer. Saw what little Carnarvon has to offer the tourist -which is not much and they would have to take out the award for apathy. Saw some turtles out at the end of the 1 mile Jetty which rivals Busseltons jetty but is in as bad a state if not worse. Certainly worth preserving though as it is a significant part of our early pioneering heritage which could rapidly decay and be lost for good. Went up to the OTC dish which has absolutely no information boards or anything there yet played such a huge part in early satellite communications I thought this was really poor. I reckon this could be a very interesting tourist attraction if they put in the effort. Unfortunately we were a little early in the season for the plantation run—although we did a drive down the South and North roads that bound the Gascoyne river. Far from the vibrant looking agricultural industry Carnarvon is made out to be—looked more like a run down set of plantations most of which were not making enough money to spend on maintenance. Having said that the North side seemed to be a bit better maintained. Perhaps
the mangroves that have propagated at the mouth of the Gascoyne River since the 1960’s should be further left to their own accord to reclaim back what was once a vibrant pastoral / industrial / shipping / transport hub....
Anyway we were glad to move on from Carnarvon (as you might have guessed).
Carnarvon—Minilya— Coral Bay
Day 23 —- Saturday 17-03-2007
Arrived in Coral Bay to an intense sun so after setting up we were straight down the beach for a snorkel and the first thing we saw were a couple of large spangled emperor around the 60-70cm mark—Yum Oh! Unfortunately it was a look but dont touch in this sanctuary zone. Given the quality of the snorkeling in this area and others further north we decided to purchase additional snorkeling gear for the kids as we had simply used normal swimming goggles up to this point. As these didn’t really cut the mustard we decided to lash out and buy the real McCoy. Perhaps Coral Bay was the worst place to purchase this stuff given that it is the place of rip offs from too many people making too much money...but we lashed
out anyway and $250 later we had acquired a full set of stuff for Amanda / Brayden and Rhiannon. Kids then couldn’t wait till tomorrow to try out their new gear...
Day 24— Sunday 18-03-2007
After an early morning ride with Brayden we all went for a snorkel and were immediately greeted with a school (~8-10 individuals) of spangled emperor who seemed to be as interested in us as we were of them. These fish came up near the surface and appeared to be eyeballing us and checking us out. It’s almost as if they know they are protected and cant be taken. Quite a few other types of fish but perhaps not as numerous further away from the channel / coral interface. Brayden and I paddled out into the bay and then snorkelled back and saw a small reef shark along the way—there wasn’t the plethora of fish in number and species that I had expected .though.
Coral bay is an interesting place given that it is not a gazetted town per se and is primarily run by two king pins in town. Their money making enterprises appear to be the overriding influence on any community based decision making. Coral bay itself is nice but it certainly has an “unusual” feel (IMHO) due to the dark overlords reigning supreme over their fiefdom! It should be renamed though to Britz / Kea / Apollo / Maui Bay — or simply Euro Bay!
Coral Bay — Cardabia Station—Ningaloo Station—South Lefroy Bay
Day 25 —- Monday 19-03-2007
With the kids enjoying the snorkeling here we thought we might stay an additional day. When Amanda went to pay they told us we would have to move even though the park was half empty as they had a group coming in who wanted to be together. A family conference decided on whether we should partly pack up and move sites or just move on. Move on we did. Took the coastal track via Cardabia Station and Ningaloo Station to Point Billie at the southern end of Lefroy Bay. What a magical spot. Be warned though… many of the stations abutting the Ningaloo Reef are now insisting on chemical toilets to be used. Some have these for hire but some don’t. I guess this has come about as people are inherently lazy creatures who seem to revert to uncivilized habits at the drop of a hat so that instead of going well away from campsites and burying their own waste and burning their toilet paper many “people” feel the need to defecate immediately adjacent to the campsites. Obviously the station owners are then forced to impose additional restrictions. Way of the world I guess . In another few years access along here may well be the haunt of the privileged few who can afford to pay EL Questro type inflated prices.
Point Billie/South Lefroy Bay—Ningaloo Station
Day 26—Day 34
Tuesday 20-03-2007 — Wednesday 28-03-2007
Our original plan was to stay here only about 3 days as we only had limited supplies from our reasonably hasty retreat out of Coral Bay. We soon quickly changed our minds as we were camped in such an idyllic little spot. The snorkeling easily bettered that at Coral Bay both in terms of coral formations and amount of and types of fish…..and we didn’t see a Britz / Maui / Kea / Apollo van so so much the better. In fact for the majority of time there was only one other set of visitors there. They had been going there since the mid 1960’s with their family when they were young and now they are retired they spend up to 7 months there over the southern winter. They had actually sold up and their van was their home so they had all the “fruit”. They are even there long enough to grow vegetables and brew his own beer whilst there!!! Really nice people and we got to know them in the latter part of our stay.
We spent most days in the water at some stage doing some snorkeling / kayaking / swimming / fishing. The amount of fish in and around the shallow coral reef was fantastic and we also saw;
Black Tip Reef Sharks
Shovel nose Rays
Loggerhead turtles
Unicorn fish
Eagle Rays
Fishing wise we caught a couple of feeds of Chinaman cod (Charlie Court Cod) and I even was able to gidgie a Chinaman cod and Parrotfish—both reasonably nice eating. Also lost a few lures and hooks along the way in and around the coral...all part of fishing. Unfortunately you really need a tinny/boat to get out to the deeper areas to really chase the decent red emperor and the like. If we’d stayed there longer and the wind hadn’t come up we could have gone out with our “neighbour” on his little boat. Perhaps next time….
After deciding to stay there for longer we needed additional supplies so we did the 300km round trip into Exmouth via the Ningaloo access road. This road is really shocking at the moment as it only gets graded once a year—and it hasn’t been done for a fair while (over a year according to Jane at the Station). Didn’t matter what speed we tried and with tyres down at 20psi you felt every corrugation so we were particularly pleased to hit the bitumen—at which point 80km felt like warp factor 9! We were absolutely amazed at the development going on south of Exmouth, it really is quite amazing. The canal development rivals that of the Mandurah canals (with prices to match at about 450,000 upwards for a block!!!). Progress marches on…
Did some exploring out to the old whaling station at Norwegian Bay. The track that used to access this area is now swallowed by mobile sand dunes so you have to work pretty hard o get up on the sand dune country and take your chance hat you don’t get bogged to the axles on soft winnowy sand. Luckily we didn’t but we did get the heart rate up a couple of times. The previous day I had checked out the initial route and had become temporarily laterally challenged in very soft sand so the tyres got let down to 15psi and came out without too much trouble.
The whaling station has had a chequered history with it operating in the early 1900’s and then on and off throughout the war years and intermittently up to about the late 1950’s whence it became uneconomical. From pictures we saw and the ruins still left it was a reasonably substantial operation that originally supported a “mother” ship and three chasers. Apparently the place was ratted for all the old large timbers and everything else seems to have been left—and consequently now in a significant state of disrepair / decay. Some of the old vats/boilers are decidedly dangerous being so thin and rusted. Several large “king Brown” bottle dumps attest to the thirsty work ‘flensing’ humpback and blue whales would have been. Would have been a hard existence back then. In its second year of operation it managed a “kill” of around 2000 whales in a season which indicates the decline of whale numbers since the turn of the (previous) century.
Unfortunately our idyllic little spot became less so as the weather turned due to yet another cyclone blocking our progress north. (Cyclone Chara???) With winds buffeting us again (although not as strong as when at Denham) we hunkered down and did a couple of catch up days of schooling with the kids. Nights were a little disrupted with me getting up up several times throughout the night rechecking and repegging our awning ropes. The canvas also acts as an overly large speaker of sorts so if the wind is quite variable lots of banging and crashing occurred to keep you from punching out the ZZZZ’s. As we were deciding whether to stay or go (although a lack of food was becoming a bit of a lay down mezair for that decision) several people came in at the end of one day so with the neighbourhood shot to pieces with overcrowding(!?!) we thought it prudent to continue northward across Yardie Creek and into Cape Range National Park.
Having not seen a Britz camper for a while we needed our fix…!?!
Ningaloo Station—Cape Range National Park — Vlaming Head.
Day 35—Thursday 29-03-2007
Having checked out some smaller tracks during our stay we were able to cut some considerable time from the normal access route and cut across to the main track heading north and onto Cape Range and the ubiquitous Yardie Creek Crossing. We got hold of the tide charts and on this day there was little difference between the low and high tides — as it happened the 1.3m tides resulted in nothing more than a small 4m wide creek at the Yardie Creek rivermouth so crossing was not an issue—in fact your average falcon / commodore would have had no trouble crossing… at least on this occasion. The crossing has claimed its share of 4WD vehicles though and should always be checked thoroughly prior to committing your hard earned dollars to the crossing.
We stayed at Yardie Creek rivermouth and paddled up the scenic gorge until it was impossible to go further. There seemed to be a fair few tailor—but none would take a lure unfortunately. We did have a few jump our kayaks though so they were fairly active. At the end of the gorge we were treated to the sight of 4 black footed rock wallabies for which the southern side of the gorge is a defined sanctuary zone. Their markings make them look like little bandits with black and white stripes across their face and down their sides. A swim in the river was refreshing, albeit still salty, and always on the lookout for the stonefish which apparently does inhabit these waters.
With little food in our stores we decided to head to Vlaming head at the tip of the Cape and book into the Lighthouse Caravan Park for a shower and a bit of a spruce up- rather than camping in the park. We had had our share of bush camping and a shower was looking particularly enticing. Booked in for two nights and spent more money than we had in the previous 10 days...
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Sandy's Mum
non-member comment
Coral Coast
I have read with great interest your blog about your trip so far. We can relate to most of the places you have been to, as we spent many holidays camping up in the Coral Coast area, and seem to spend our annual holidays now at Carnarvon. I agree Carnarvon leaves a lot to be desired, but there are also some very nice spots if you have a 4WD lol. Hope you continue to see lots of interest, as I am sure you will. Best wishes from Elaine