Day 71 - Ningaloo to Coral Bay.

Brave adventurers that we are, after farewelling Elaine, Libby and Roddy, we headed off to cross the sandy mouth to Yardie Creek. The creek hasn't flown out to the sea for two years. Justin gave it a go with 25 psi in the tyres, and we failed, 20 metres from the start of the track.

 

He let them down to 16 psi, but we were stuck fast. Any further attempts only dug the left hand side of the car in deeper. We looked under the car, most of the underside was sitting on the sand, so we started digging.

 

One helpful bloke wandered over, commented "This looks interesting" then disappeared. We removed the spare tyre from the front of the trailer to lessen the weight. After a few more failed attempts to drive away, and once we had dug the underside of the car free of the sand, Justin unhitched the camper trailer and managed to get the car across the sand to the rocky other side.

Now what to do with the trailer, resting on its drawbar? We were pondering this problem when a couple came up in a Suzuki Vitara. The man spent some time looking at our situation, then offered to help. Meanwhile a charter group with a boat on the trailer tried crossing. They also got stuck. That made feel a whole lot better! They let their tyres down and had a spare wheel at the front of the trailer to let down that helped. By now we knew it was Rod and Liz that were saving us. Using Rod's snatch strap and our two snatch straps to reach, his itsy bitsy Vitara pulled the trailer back on to a more solid part of the road. Then Justin retrieved the car from the other side of the crossing and hitched up the trailer again. By this stage I was ready to go the long way to Coral Bay via Exmouth. Rob was very encouraging for us to have another go at getting across the sand. So I crossed my fingers while Justin let the tyres down to 10psi, kept the car in low range second gear and resolved not to change gears mid crossing, all on Rod's advice. Rod was confident we would make it across, and WE DID! As he said, everyone is going to stuck sometime if they have a sense of adventure. We chose a good place to gt stuck, there were plenty of people about and vehicles going past.all the same, I was glad to be over the crossing.

 

Thanks Rod and Liz!

We spent some time putting air back in the tyres and making lunch. We were now two hours behind. We took the costal track to Coral Bay as seen below, and despite getting bogged, it was all worth it. This route is much more picturesque than the main highway. In the 120km we passed only two cars.

 

Still, we arrived in time to set up in daylight. It is windier here than we experienced at Ningaloo Peninsular. Coral Bay hasn't changed much in the eight years since we last visited. Two caravan parks, a resort, a backpackers, two small supermarkets, shops and tour places. I heard that in the '70s all there was a spot for ten caravans and a shop.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Day 70 - Ningaloo Peninsular

Our neighbours are lovely, Libby and Roddy, originally from South Africa, for the last 30 years from Fisherman's Bay in NSW. We discussed snorkel stories before they headed off to the Oyster Stacks and we returned to Turquoise Bay to do the drift dive. Another day of relaxing in paradise. I snorkelled with or without partners, dried out then got wet again for most of the day.

We drove down to Yardie Creek to have a practice run at taking the tiny coastal track to Coral Bay, rather than going over 200km to get there, via Exmouth. When we were here eight years ago we went the long way as we had no 4WD experience and we were borrowing Bob Benton's Suzuki Vitara. Back then you had to cross the river mouth to add to the challenge, and the sea water would have rusted out his car eventually. We zoomed across so easily, we felt confident for the harder crossing with the camper trailer tomorrow morning.

On our return to the camp, I quickly prepared zucchini and corn fritters for dinner, as suggested by Phoebe, before we went across to "Happy Hour" at the benches, as instigated by Leo and Elaine. Libby and Roddy wandered over soon enough, as did other people we hadn't met yet. All the kids got together and played on the sand dunes. The adult continued swapping stories, advice, details and experiences until dusk. The Shumacks returned for their fritters with sour cream and tomato salsa, which were so nice we will be having them again. Dessert was fruit and non burnt custard for a change. We had been having trouble with our stove sporadically throwing up huge flames of yellow gas whilst I am cooking, since at least Alice Springs. It got to the point where I was calling the stove Christine after a movie about a possessed car of the same name. We also know of a certain oven down at Golden Beach by the same name, but that is a story for another time. In Katherine Justin replaced the jets and bought a extention hose with a matching diameter to the original piece, eliminating that as the cause of the flame throwing. As neither of theese fixes stopped the dangerous flames, and google or camping shop staff had no other ideas, we ditched the stove in Broome and made another purchase. The new Primus stove is fantastic, and means unburnt custard!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Day 69 - Ningaloo Peninsular

Today we headed to a new camp at Tulki Bay, the closest camp to Turquoise Bay. Our camp hosts are Leo and Elaine. The wind hadn't changed from yesterday, so we tried out the bay snorkel rather than the drift dive on the other side of the point. I had to get Alex trained up to not kick, just float, while snorkelling. Justin and I have the fins on, so we drag the kids around. Because of the fins our feet are a bit wrecked. I had bruised arches and blisters, and Justin's second those were rubbed raw. After the horse had bolted, we took to wearing hiking socks while snorkelling, which helps.

You'll have to wait for my underwater photos for this entry, as I didn't take many others. Justin and I saw a turtle, but I couldn't get a shot. Georgina was thrilled to see a blue spotted stingray. Phoebe loved everything she saw. She went out with Justin without her swimming noodle and snorkelled really well. The noodles are handy not just as floatation devices, the wearer is easily spotted from the shore.

We had the obligatory sausages and green salad for dinner, and I cooked potatoes for the first time, served tossed in butter, parsley and salt. Tasty.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Day 68 - Ningaloo Peninsular

We put our clothes to was as a priority. What a relief. We chose Lakeside for our first snorkel as it is good for kids. However, with the prevailing strong south westerly, nowhere along the coast had ideal snorkelling conditions. The good part regarding the wind was we would be blown back to shore rather than out to sea. Justin headed out with Phoebe and Lexie, and I took George. It was hard to get out the little distance to the reef, but once there we floated just above the reef slowly heading into shore. Non digital cameras still have a purpose, I bought a disposable waterproof one. Fingers crossed the photos work. The power of digital is impossible to resist. Of course the girls asked to look at the photos on the film camera, as they only know the digital camera era. I may have to search for somewhere in Melbourne to get the photos developed.

Below is the carpark at Lakeside.

 

We kept an eye on the tide in case the Toyota was in danger of floating away. The water here is so enticing, fish are visible from the shoreline.

 

The girls managed snorkelling well, it was pretty choppy, adding to the challenge. Justin had a difficult time with both hands occupied, and the clearance was shallow above the coral. Lexie snorkelled like she was riding an exercise bike, upright and pedalling the whole time, which forced Justin to go around corals rather an over the top. There are many varieties of fish, and many of each variety. Never a dull moment. The girls loved it, they pointed at everything under the water, even the sea cucumbers!

 

We spent over an hour in town using their Internet trying to resolve the blog issues. While Justin looked i to it, we went to the town beach. We could only tolerate it for twenty minutes as it was populated by hungry sandflies. We sat in the shopping centre carpark whilst I deleted photos. I had an error pop up stating I used up my quota of 1000 photos. We counted up the 61 days so far, and are nowhere near that number. After investigating, we realised I had doubled up with a lot of photos. The dramas of Blogsy!

We headed back to the safety of our sandfly free camp. We had a cheese platter for dinner as lunch had been at 3 pm.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Day 67 - Forty Mile Beach to Ningaloo Peninsular.

I visited the beach before we left, it didn't entice me to swim. It would look better at high tide.

 

It looked like someone tried to drive to Barrow Island then thought better of it!

 

We dropped into Fortescue Roadhouse to get some fuel. Whilst we were filling up and cleaning windscreens, Phoebe heard on the UHF radio a request for help for an emergency, as a truck had turned over just south of the Fortescue Roadhouse. As this was the direction we were heading we went past the accident scene. By this stage there were plenty of people roadside to help, so we thought it best not to add to the drama. The entire roadtrain was on its roof off the road. An ambulance soon passed us on the way to the scene. We heard some chat from other truck drivers over the radio about what might have happened. Their theories were based on the driver getting distracted - eating while driving, fallen asleep at the wheel. We never heard if the driver was alright.

The road to the Ningaloo Peninsular heads inland from Karratha, it was fairly drab. We popped into Exmouth on the way through to the Yardie Homestead Caravan Park. We were here eight years ago, now they have built a marina just south of town. It looks like things are booming here, unlike Wyndam which is going backwards. The centre of town hasn't changed much, except they have two IGA supermarkets open across the courtyard from each other. I'm surprised the town can support both. We turned left to our park after the yellow caravan.

 

We settled in, with the girls playing on the playground and shooting goals at the basketball ring.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Day 66 - Eighty Mile Beach to Forty Mile Beach

Eighty Mile Beach has a lot of clay in the sand. The tide was out in the morning, the sea was about two MCGs away.

 

We tried to get to the water's edge, but the muddy sand stopped us. George and Lexi were sinking in a long way. It looked like slip, very wet, sludgy clay. It took some work to rinse it off our feet.

 

Our journey took us near to Karratha and Dampier, so we turned in, mostly to see the statue of Red Dog in Dampier.

 

If you're not involved in mining, there isn't a lot going on in these towns. We tried to buy a Red Dog cloth badge for the girls, but they don't seem to make one. Plenty of stubbie holders though.

We found the turn off to Forty Mile Beach on the second go, you need to turn down the gas plant road. We met the camp ground host who explains how the sites work, where to camp, etc. There are no toilets here so Georgina got to christen our portable toilet. For the first time since Limmen National Park we actually felt cold and wore our jumpers after sunset. The wind is blowing off the ocean here. We could see lights across Regnard Bay from our beach.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Day 65 - Cape Leveque to Eighty Mile Beach

As you can see from the heading on this entry, Mindo hut wasn't available for the fourth night. We could have moved to the hut next door, but Justin and I decided it wasn't worth the bother to move for one night. We would tack an extra day onto Ningaloo Peninsular instead. Therefore we left at ten, and had a big day of driving ahead of us. Getting petrol at the Roebourne Roadhouse 25km out of Broome was as exciting as the journey got. The stretch of road between Broome and Karratha is particularly dull. We pulled in at Port Headland for lunch, but I couldn't find a bakery. We settled for supermarket bread. They are doing major street renovations in the town centre, so it was hard to find anything.

Eighty Mile Beach was a nice caravan park between the first and second sand dunes. There isn't any shelter from trees, so the sea breeze is much appreciated. We saw the ubiquitous sunset, still enthralling.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Day 64 - Cape Leveque

On arrival we booked in for Bundy's cultural tour, where you got to make a spear. We had to be at the store near Lombardina by 8.30 am. We then followed Bundy in our car over the sand dunes to Chile creek.

 

There two of us and Bundy tried to spear a fish for lunch. Even Bundy came back empty handed, so lunch was off.

 

He then lit a fire to use for spear making while the tide came in rapidly. The spears were pre-cut, so we only had to heat them on the fire to make the wood pliable, straighten them using a fork in a tree's branches, strip off the bark and rasp away any notches. Sounds simple, but in helping Phoebe I think I created one of the crookedest spears in Bundy's memory. We learnt that mangrove wood burns very hot and can leave nasty scars.

 

Bundy took us fishing with our newly made spears, along the creek below where it meets the sea.

 

Eventually he stabbed two fish with the one thrust. As they were smaller and they weren't too injured, he was letting them go as a shark came and ate one. The second fish was looking unwell, so he let Phoebe stab it so he could feed it to his grandson's cat. We did the tour with a couple of out of control boys, aged ten and eight who impeded even Bundy's chances to catch a fish of a decent size. Both the boys were carrying their spears carelessly, and they had so many second warnings I wondered how long it would be before they stabbed their parents or themselves. I'd thought any bloodshed would be accidental, until I heard the youngest yell out "I hate you Dad". My mind jumped to the Menendez brothers in the USA. Justin was invited by Bundy to join him on a night fishing trip in the evening. He has a student exchange program running with Trinity Grammar and St. Kevin's in Melbourne, and he was taking them out that night. I have high hopes that without the boys as baggage, he might catch a fish. They are easier to catch at night as they are asleep, so my fingers are crossed. We said goodbye to Bundy, then the O' Brien family. We passed on details I case we are in Sydney, and they visit Melbourne. We drove out to the turtle hatchery at One Arm Point. It is the wrong time of year for young turtles, but there was still plenty to see.

 

The marine turtles were my favourite. Phoebe and I were asked to feed the barramundi. Even though we knew it was coming, the loud snapping noise still causes us to jump. The man who showed us around seemed very weary, perhaps because we came straight after a tour bus of teenagers.

 

We squeezed in a look at the operating lighthouse. It stopped being manned in 1987, later than I would expect for any lighthouse.

 

Justin had a short time at our camp before he had to leave for the night fishing. I got everything I could think of for dinner out of the fridge before the girls and I went down to the beach before dinner and he took the car, which contains the fridge. We had a lazy late afternoon, Phoebe was trying to catch our dinner with her new spear.

 

Our beach hut.

 

After sunset we lit a fire back at camp, and after tasty beef stroganoff we toasted marshmallows again. Justin ate the strog when he returned after fishing. We will not be having fish for dinner tomorrow night! Unsurprisingly, fish hide themselves well to sleep. Once hou find one, even though the fish is asleep, as soon as the spear breaks the surface water tension it wakes and instantly speeds off. Years of practice are required. We decided if our hut, Mindo, was free tomorrow, we would stay here another day and forgo Karanjini National Park. We are both enjoying the sea, as we can swim here, and are disinclined to venture inland again. We have gorged ourselves on gorges. We will ask first thing in the morning. We did a semi pack in the likelyhood we have to leave by 10am.

 

Below is the cheesecake almost consumed yesterday, from the Mantle Cafe at Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Day 63 - Cape Leveque

Justin had the foresight to book a beach hut for our three night stay here, and it is fabulous. We are right on the small cliff edge at the beach.


The view to the left.....

 

and the right. At high tide the water is up to the bottom of the sandstone rocks in the foreground.

 

There are plenty of shells in the shelter, so the girls set up shell shops.

 

We got to the Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm by the required 9am ready for all but me to do the tour. I relaxed in the little oasis having a coffee or two and updating the blog. George and Lexie weren't stimulated by the pearl grading discussion at the end of the tour, so they came out to me early. I bought them a mango and vanilla milkshake, and they shared the biggest wedge of cheesecake ever seen. They were unable to finish it. Justin and Phoebe had a go at their shared piece of cheesecake, and finished it. TheY all enjoyed the tour, I would recommend it even if you aren't interested in pearls. We both had our boat rides with Cameron, the head diver, originally from Scotland. He likes to go fast in the boat, which adds a bit of spice to the tour.

The amphibious boat below, made by Sealegs, means Cameron can show off at the boat ramp. While others fluff about removing the boat from the trailer, etc, he is in the water and speeding off, using his 150 horsepower outboard.

 

This is where the oysters have their shells cleaned for maximum health. They are put through a purpose built dishwasher then any hard substances chiselled off. This team of three work 10 hour days on the boat, breaks are even taken here. Apparently they have a stereo playing loudly to drown out the boredom

 

You can just make out the oyster racks hanging three metres below the surface. This is considered a small farm, producing 70,000 pearls a year. This includes all grades of pearl. They have 140,000 oysters in the water, they take two years to produce a decent pearl. They get xrayed before opening to check it is worth their while.

On our return, I saw a gladwrapped parcel that looked like uncooked scones. Our neighbours, now departed, left us some American marshmallows. They are huge and look doughy. We spent the afternoon swimming out from our hut, as the tide was now in. Whilst snorkelling Phoebe and Justin saw two stingrays. Nick and family joined us later in the afternoon. We invited them to come back to our hut for a fire after dinner. After our Thai beef salad and fruit, we cooked both types of marshmallow over the coals. The American ones aren't as sweet. After the O' Brien family left I cooked scones for morning tea the next day, as I didn't want to waste the hot coals.

Posted with Blogsy