8 days in paradise...

Our next stop was Coral Bay.  Quite simply put we spent 4 days in paradise.  It was hard to leave.  The drive to Coral Bay from Hamelin was interesting.  Hamelin it self is quite remote (but probably not by most WA standards!) – an hour from Denham (a small town) or south down the coast a 3 hour drive to the next big town or 2 hours north to the next big town – with not much in between!!  It was roughly 450km up to Coral Bay, and with the exception of Carnarvon (where we spent 3 hours – about 3 hours too many) we didn’t see much. A few roadhouses, not very many cars, loads of bird of prey and lots of lots of land.  It was the drive that finally bought up the question (from Olivia) of “why is Australia so big and why is so much of the land not lived on?”  So it was to our surprise (and somewhat horror) when we pulled into Coral Bay to find is swarming with people – where did they all come from???  With only 2 caravan parks to choose from it was an easy decision.  The town is tiny – 2 holiday parks, a resturant, a pub, a small supermarket and a hand full of other shops.  You can walk the length of the town in less than 5 minutes.  All of this is hugged tightly to the main attraction – the stunning beach and Nigaloo reef only 20 metres off shore.  We spent 4 days snorkelling, sunning ourselves in the 33 degrees and generally living the life.

From Coral Bay we moved up the coast to Cape Range National Park – a national park on the border of the Nigaloo Marine National Park.  Two wonderful places.  We loved Cape Range – we did a few gorge walks and spotted some rock wallabies – beautiful little creatures.

We also walked up along Yardie creek gorge - stunning.

We did some more exploring of Nigaloo – including a Whaleshark tour.  WOW WOW WOW.  We had 5 dives with the sharks and the biggest was around 7 – 8 metres.  Olivia and Alice were brave and swam with them too – the sharks are harmless, if not a little intimidating.  They are the most graceful, effortless creatures I’ve ever seen – totally uninterested in us – even when the boat dropped Alice and me off right in front of it’s mouth – to say I kicked for Australia, to get out of the way, would be an understatement!!  We managed to get out of the way and enjoyed watching it from the side.

We even made our own whaleshark..

It was hard to say goodbye to Cape Range, even though there were only pit toilets and no showers, we had another wonderful 4 days of being in the sun and by the sea.  Our campground only had 9 sites and a viewing platform up on the dune (only 20 metres from our tent) to watch the sun go down.  ‘Happy hour’ was from 5 for all those staying and stories were swapped about each persons adventures of the day – followed by the sunset - magic.  We meet some fun people and had lovely camp hosts who seemed honestly sad to see us go – like we were the only people who had ever come to stay.

But on we must go – if only for a shower!!

A.