Now all we do is wait till a ranger arrives at ... 8am. We boil the kettle on the burner on the ground and have brekky while we wait. Soon after the next car parks behind us and by 8am there are 10 + cars in the line up. The calls come in from the camp hosts to report how many sites are available and we get a spot in Bungarra
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| Our camp from the beach...little sandy patch near the horizon (centre) |
and about 500metres from the beach. Not our ideal spot but at least we are in the park. We could have tried to transfer in the next day but we decided to stay here for the next 3 nights.
All we can say we had the best time in Bungarra, we ended staying for 6 nights. We had lovely hosts, Lyn and Graham, and met a great lady, Milly, also camped in Bungarra. The weather didn't change much while we were here, it blew and blew and blew. The camp hosts did inform us it is the windiest month of the year and from now on it just gets windier till cyclone season in December. The camp sites are hard gravel surface and Steve had a hard time getting the steel pegs in the ground and there were a few bent ones in the process but we got the awning up.
We did some fishing and Steve's first catch was a Longtom about 3ft long, he has like a long beak and a mouth full of very sharp little teeth, it took the two of us to get the tackle out of it's mouth. Any way we killed it in the process so we kept it for bait, we had to cut the head off to fit it in the bucket. Steve caught an emporer and he was delicious. Unfortunately I only caught a tiny cod and he got to live another day. We had plenty of bites but we kept getting taken into the coral and getting snagged...no dumb fish here.
A couple of other nights we went fishing at Sandy Bay, one night with Milly, Steve caught a 4-5 ft shovel nose shark but he got put back (I didn't see it but Milly helped Steve set him free) and Milly, who seem to be the only one who knew what she was doing caught a few nice bream.
We also had a fantastic snorkel at Torquoise Bay,
there is a drift snorkel where we had three reef shark sitings and lots of fish, great and small, corals...it was beautiful. Then we went in the bay area to snorkel, calmer water and just as good.
We drove south of the National Park to have a look at other camp sites and to see if we could get the Tvan across Yardie Creek Gorge which is not open to the sea atm (all sand)
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| the sandbar we drove across in the background |
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| Yardie Creek Gorge |
and we drove the car across with a bit of effort and drove to Boat Harbour Campground. The road south to Ningaloo Station is very corrugated and takes about 3 hours; we did see a Landcruiser take his Tvan across the sand so that was not a problem, we will think about that one.
We had fun at Cape Range socializing with Milly but we did loose one of the eyelets in the awning and the pole slipped right through the roof, we were leaving the next day.
We saw whales nearly every time we looked out to sea and even though it was windy we had a bit of R and R. The view from the lighthouse at the north of Cape Range NP was beautiful and the number of whales we saw were endless from here!
We decided to do the drive south the long way round, through Exmouth so we could have a shower at the visitor's centre ($5) and empty the loo, have some lunch and do the laundry, then we drove to Coral Bay.
We had one thing to do in Coral Bay and that was to swim with the Manta Rays!!!
The Friday we arrived was the start of the School Holidays and a long weekend...bad timing, both Caravan Parks were chockers, we got two nights in the Bayview CP and we booked our Dive/snorkel for Sunday...two dives, a snorkel with the manta rays with lunch and a refresher diving course. We have a couple behind us, Gloria and Ben from Fremantle way and they were lovely people with their very timid dog, Jack, spent lots of time gas bagging with them. Saturday morning we were able to book another 2 nights in the CP and Sunday we were up early (I hate early) and were over to do our refresher course at 8am at the dive shop and they had over booked and asked us if we could come back on Monday (not happy Jan). So Sunday we had to suffer it out and sit on the beach and go snorkelling instead, it doesn't get much tougher than this.
Coral Bay is just that, the whole bay is a solid shelf of coral so the snorkelling is great here and quite safe except for the hundreds of kids and adults in the water and on the beach, kayaks and surf skis in the water etc, its been a long time since I've seen so many people on a beach...school holidays will do that.
Monday came and we had a terrible Sunday night with a party night at the backpackers building with loud music and young people coming home about midnight to the park having discussions and arguments that kept me awake till 3.30am...long weekends will do that.
Up again early and very tired, out on the boat, little rough, squeasy stomach, got all geared up to dive, in the water and it was a no go, I freaked out and was not comfortable to go down, I took three goes and gave up so I went snorkelling with some other people instead but Steve had a dive. Saw a few whales, dolphins, turtles everywhere, fish, clams, the biggest cuttle fish I have ever seen swimming around the coral, Steve saw a moray eel, all was good.
We had some lunch, still not feeling so good and it was cold and windy so I didn't get back into the water, Steve was having ear aches so he didn't get back in either. It was so good to be finally heading back to shore for me anyway. We had a good day and we were offered a voucher for when we come back next year to swim with the whale sharks for being mucked around and having to change days. Back at shore to got to see Merve in the water hanging around the pier...he is a very, very, very big Qld Groper and not always happy apparently.
Tuesday we packed up and said our goodbyes to Gloria and Ben and went to the dive shop and we were given a voucher for 1 adult to snorkel with the whale sharks ($390.00 worth), that was very unexpected but appreciated so it was not a total loss (a bit of wineing goes a long way sometimes).
We stopped in at Carnarvon to pick up a letter from our GP, that we redirected from Port Hedland, and it did not arrive, good old Australia Post. Port Hedland did not get the message and the letter was still there so it would take about 3 days to go back to Perth and arrive in Carnarvon. We stopped in Carnarvon for one night and we woke the next morning to a burn off at the back of the park that was a little out of control.
We also got to try a BLT from a food van at the blowholes...MyWayHighwayFoodTruck...he is on fb and if you ever see him on the road stop and have a feed, yummmmmmmmmmmmm.
Once again windy as here and did very little for 4 nights. We packed up on the second day and moved the van around to try and keep out of the wind (we really could have used our awning here) and we only had the car awning for shade but we survived. We drove north from Quobba to Red Bluff, this is where the surfing is done
and we stopped a couple of times on the limestone cliffs to watch the whales and had lunch, and on the way back we stopped and had the awesome luck to watch a small pod of humpbacks having a play, breaching and tail slapping, so close we could hear them breathing out their blowholes, magical.
There is a beach here to snorkel but first we went for a walk for Steve to get some oysters but they were only small.
On our ventures we were standing in knee deep water and the fish started to swim around our legs...football fish?, parrot, whiting of all sizes and then a girl started to feed her lunch to the fish and all the coloured coral fish came to the surface they were beautiful. Time to move on and the tide was going out so we had a quick snorkel but it got a bit shallow and it was hard to swim over the coral without damaging it so we got out but it was great all the same.
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| Quobba lighthouse |
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| The coast at the blow holes |
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| Quobba camp site |
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| High on the hill there's a lonely goat herd...plenty of goats |
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| This lucky sea eagle had his lunch for the day |
I saw an add in the laundry, $15 T-Bone or Rump with salad and chips at the tavern, sounds good so we prettied ourselves up as best we could, got the directions from the office and off we went. We were forewarned it didn't look much from the outside but the food was good. Well they weren't far wrong, from the outside in the dusk it looked like an old shed with a lot of kegs sitting out outside and anybody from our local area that remembers the Arana League Club before it is now, this tavern looked like that, very rough around the edges but they did have three TV's on different channels and we watched, Hamish and Andy; X Factor, Sunday Night and 60 Minutes while we waited and off course the place was packed and we finally got our T-Bones by 8pm, we only had to wait an hour and a half. While we were waiting a dad had to run out the front door with his little boy throwing up down the back of his shirt while the kids mother was running behind trying to catch vomit in her hands and then a cat came in the front door with a dead mouse in it's mouth and decided to hide under our table and drop the mouse at my feet. The bar girl was freaking out not knowing what to do...I grabbed a serviette off our table and picked up the dead mouse by the tail and handed it to some local bloke that thought he was going to save the day and he passed it on to the bar girl and then someone came and got the cat and put it outside. Hahahaha. Real Class, I know how to pick a good place to eat out; anyway the food was good as we were told.
Today is Monday 7 October and the car is still getting washed (it took Steve two washes to get the car clean), the clothes are on the line and it is 1pm...lunch time.
This arvo we went to pick up our mail and see some sights of Carnarvon but we have left some for tomorrow.
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| One Mile Jetty |
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| Pelican Point |
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| a little sand dune problem near Pelican Point |
Cheers
PS: ...and we never get sick of watching these
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