Coral Bay

On Saturday, May 25th we drove from Denham to Coral Bay (about 570 kilometres) stopping briefly at Carnarvon for fuel and supplies.  This is our first time in Coral Bay and we really like it.  The campsite is near the beach, has plenty of shade and the facilities are very good.

The beach is perfect for snorkelling – there’s a sand bar which drops off straight onto the coral reef where there’s plenty of wildlife, we’ve seen Coral Cod, Blue Spotted Rays and a couple of Octopus.  The children are getting more confident and Emily has been doing some quite long dives down to get a better look at the fish.  I’m playing with the Go Pro video camera and have some quite good footage, I’ll post some soon.  This is a great place for a family holiday – we’ll definitely come back.

Apart from snorkelling we’ve not done much else other than school work under the shade of a Tamarisk tree- the children are actually pretty good at settling down and concentrating even though there’s lots going on around the campsite.  Oliver’s handwriting and reading are improving.  They’re both almost up to date with their journals so we’ll post those soon.

Wednesday 29th: Did a drift snorkel from the “5 Knots” sign (just south of Coral Bay) back into Coral Bay.  The children had made friends with the Kellam children earlier in the week.  The Kellam family are from Melbourne and are also travelling around Australia in a coach which has been kitted out with everything including a washing machine!  They tow a 4WD which they use as a run-about and to go on off-road adventures.

Later on we watched the fish being fed in the shallows over the sand bar.  The girl feeding the fish (Spangled Emperors I think) gave the children a handful of food and they had great fun watching (and feeling) the fish swim around their legs.  I used the Go Pro to take the video and some free editors to cut and compress it.  Click the link below; it works with Windows Media Player and Quicktime Player:

FishFeeding

Thursday 30th:  Packed up the trailer and parked it in the public car park.  Then we headed off with the Kellam family to Oyster Bridge which is about 10 kilometres off-road from Coral Bay.  I had been told the previous day that it was a good place to snorkel and that occasionally there were big fish and turtles just inside the reef.

The drive to Oyster Bridge took us into the sand dunes so we had to reduce the tyre pressures and use low range on a couple of the steeper dunes (great fun!).

The Oyster Bridge reef is about 50 metres offshore and runs parallel to the beach.  The sea outside the reef was quite rough, the waves were breaking over it and creating quite a swell inside the lagoon.  Rod Kellam and I climbed a large sand dune, watched the water for a while and agreed that it was safe for the kids to snorkel as long as we stayed inside the and didn’t get too close – it was covered in sharp Oyster shells (Aahh so that’s why it’s called…).

We swam out to the reef but the visibility was poor; each time a wave crashed over the reef we were surrounded by bubbles.  Also, the current that ran parallel to the beach was stronger than we had anticipated so we found it difficult to make any progress along the reef.  After half an hour or so we called it a day and had lunch on one of the big sand dunes – it was a great spot, the view along the coast was spectacular.  All in all it was a fun-packed morning and it was nice to share the experience with the Kellams.  But we needed head for Exmouth so we said our goodbyes, made our way back to Coral Bay to hook up the trailer, and were on the road by 2PM for the 150 kilometre journey.