Exmouth and Coral Bay

 After all the fishing and snorkeling we thought we might do some bush walking at Mandu Mandu Gorge.  It was a great walk with some great views. Mountain goat country but it was a good change.

 Fishing at Cape Range National park was pretty good. Unfortunately the wind was pretty strong on a couple of days. But on one morning a neighbour at the campsite Darryl and myself went fishing. Just by luck we met Darryl, Dianne and their son Tim at Cooper Pedy and Uluru. Dianne and Sue work at the same Hospital and we kept in touch with them during our travels. They heard about the Mesa campsite with its shade and good tree coverage from the wind and we both organised to get a site next to each other. Anyway both Darryl and I caught plenty of fish but kept two. This fish I caught and it put up a good fight was a big eye Trevally. It doesn't look that big but it was somewhere between 50 and 55 cm's. We all ate it for dinner that night and it tasted great so with three hungry boys and Sue and I it was a decent size. So I thought, until we got to Coral Bay.

 Once leaving Exmouth we arrived at Coral Bay, which is about 200 km's south of Exmouth. Like Exmouth, Coral Bay is known for it's snorkeling and fishing. It has a pretty little cove which is sanctuary zoned which you can snorkle in and they also have fish feeding at 3.30 p.m. every day. Big fish called Spangled Emporers come in, in droves and you can hand feed them. They are said to be excellent eating but the boys and I knew we had to be patient as we had booked a fishing charter a couple of days later. Sue and Benjamin had booked on the same day a coral reef cruise as they are not as much into fishing and Benjamin has not been able to snorkle out in the deep as the rest of us have. So we were all excited. We also visited a part of the cove which baby reef sharks live in before they venture out into the big open sea. The reef sharks are almost harmless but none of us were going to enter the water. We saw many baby reef sharks in the shallows.

The next day Sue and Benjamin went on their cruise and they saw some fantastic colourful fish and coral. Benjamin announced that his favourite fish was the colourful parrot fish and Sue was impressed with the coral and with some areas of coral named Lavender Patch and Ayers Rock (you can guess what they looked like). Sue and the boys and I plan to snorkle over this area in the days to come. Sue used the video camera to record some of this action so unfortunately I haven't worked out how to download small parts of our video footage to the blog as yet.

Liam, Jake and I were picked up at 7 am from our caravan park by the fishing charter bus. There were about  12 people in total. As we left the pier in this big boat the last thing I thought of was sea sickness, as it was so calm and little wind was blowing. That all changed as we motored over the reef and into the ocean. Liam said he had a sore stomach and I knew what that meant, I then started getting the sweats. The boat was rocking from side to side and the trip out to the deep reef where we were to fish was to take an hour and a half. I tried to ignore sea sickness but finally was overcome with a need to vomit. As I got up to vomit over the side of the boat trying not to spray people in the process, the boat took one of its violent rocks. I landed face first on the boats deck and picked myself up with some assistance and sat in a place trying to get as much fresh sea air as possible. I probably spent 1 hour trying to focus on the horizon, but there is no place that can help you when you have sea sickness. After an hour Liam succumed to the sea sickness. Both of us sat next to each other feeling rather bloody awful. As we stopped at the fishing spot Jake joined us and said he was not feeling well. This fishing trip was beginning to be a nightmare as we were going to return to shore at about 4p.m and it was about 8.30 am. After vomiting I felt a bit better and Jake and I started fishing. We caught two fish and all the time I was trying to not vomit. Jake was past the worst of his seas sickness whilst Liam was just reaching the peak of his, vomting a couple of times. It must have been scary for the fish coming up as I dragged them up from about 100 meters in depth and they arrive out of the water with a big hook in their mouth and an 11 year old vomiting near them. It's good to laugh about it now but it was rather nasty at the time. Anyway at about 10.30 am,  I had one more vomit and started to beat the effects off, Jake was back to normal and Liam soldiered on. We fished at about another 4 or 5 spots and we  caught some great fish. Goldband snapper, Tomato cod, honeycomb cod, and a Robinsons seabream. The biggest being the Goldband snapper which we caught 4, all of them exceeding 80 cm's with the biggest being around 90 cm's. Liam hauled this in which is a testiment to his courage under much duress. Jake was reeling in a lot of catches as some of the crew gave him a turn of there rod when we were quite. As we returned to shore we all were glad it was over and happy with our catch. Even with being sick we all had a great day. In total the crew caught about 50 fish, we kept 8. The fish can bee seen below. As the charter finished we rondevoued to the fish cleaning spot with the crew to fillet and bag our catch up. With a quite beer, softdrink for the two boys, we enjoyed taking some photos of our fish. After the fish was filleted we had quite a hall. We will be eating fish for dinner for at least the next week. We had the goldband snapper last night and it matched the taste of Barramundi. The kids loved it. There's nothing better than freshly caught fish on the bbq to make you appreciate a fishing trip.

A memorable day, some of these photo's are worth their weight in gold.

                                               Jake holding a Goldband Snapper

                                                 Liam holding a Goldband Snapper

                                            Me holding a Robinsons Seaperch

                                   Liam holding a tomato cod and Jake with a honeycomb cod

                                                 Liam holding the fish he reeled in.

Me with the biggest snappers of the day, that we caught. Each fish provided us with 6 large filleted steaks of tasty meat. Good with a beer or white wine. Not a bad day at all. I think we are now half way through our trip. It's going to be hard to top the 1st half but time will tell.

We are next in Monkey Mia and then Kalbarri which will take about 10 days then 3 weeks in Perth to stay with Sue's mum. The boys are looking forward to getting back to creature comforts and my home made pizza's. I must admit as much as I have enjoyed camping Sue and I will enjoy the change. But one thing that our creature comforts at home will never beat is the great view of the stars you get when you have a wee in the middle of the night, it is spectacular. Anyway bye for now.

Exmouth

 This was taken at Tom Price I am greasing the second wheel so no more mechanical issues slow our trip down.

 Taken at an overnight stop between Tom Price and Exmouth called Barradale. We all enjoyed building a fire pit and collecting wood for our fire in the evening. It was extremely windy during our fire and when sleeping. We used the rocks to shield the fire from the wind, unfortunately we couldn't shield the camper trailer which felt like it was going to lift off  luckily it stayed put and no damage was sustained.

 We spent 2 weeks in Exmouth, unfortunately wifi coverage was poor to non existent at the places we were staying so that is the reason for the long delay re this blog update. The first 6 days we spent at the lighthouse caravan park. We explored Exmouth and its many fishing and swimming beaches. We had some great success, one day Jake and I brought our rods along whilst Sue, Liam and Benjamin played on the beach. Within the first 5 minutes Jake had caught the biggest fish of the day a 40 cm Bream (seen below), he caught 3 other Bream and we kept two of these which tasted very nice for dinner. I caught one. We were very fortunate to come across the school of Bream and we had plenty of nibbles amongst the 5 fish caught for the day. Amongst the fishing Liam and Benjamin caught crabs and spotted many feeding turtles in the water.

It was a beautiful view from the lighthouse as seen below and with an added bonus of watching humpback whales and dolphins frolicking in the ocean.

 These flowers are called "Mulla Mulla", they are everywhere, we have seen them ever since we entered WA.

 After 6 nights at the lighthouse caravan park we spent 8 nights at the Cape Range National Park. We have seen some spectacular things during our trip but this was definately a major highlight. You can see the view from our camper trailer it was magic. Getting to the camp site was an ordeal as you have to line up at the NP rangers gate before 8 a.m. and hope that camp sites are free. There are about 50 campsites in the NP lined along the coast. You can book online some spots but 90% are first in best dressed at the rangers gate . So in the morning Liam and I woke up at 5 a.m., and made our way to the rangers gate which was about a 10 minute drive from the Lighthouse CP. It took us nearly 20 minutes to get there due to the large number of roos on the edge of the road and some stupid ones wanting to play chicken with us. We arrives at 5.20 a.m. and were astounded to find that we were 7th in line. By the time the ranger opened the gates at 8.a.m., the line had grown to 19. Luckily we got a spot and I think the first 10 were successful. The campsite consisted of 14 spots, each one had a permanent camp host who looked after payment and maintenance of camp. We stayed at the Mesa camp which was fantastic. The camp host was a 73 year old retired WAPOL member who was a fitness freak. He ran a boot camp at 4 p.m. everyday which consisted of push ups, skipping, dips and running up sand dunes. Not for the faint hearted, I did it once and decided that I would either keel over or do myself an injury which would not be good for the rest of the trip. Sue and the boys did it a couple of times as they had the brains to take it easy when they got tired. I can still remember running up the sand dunes trying to keep up with the 73 year old with the boys not far behind me, pride was at stake so I gave it my all but I was really sore for the next couple of days. I'm sure the ex WAPOL member was in charge of the fitness at the academy, he was a fine specimen for his age.

                                                         View from our camp site.

 Snorkeling at Turquoise Bay, Cape range NP. 'Fantastic', Liam was given an underwater camera from my mum and dad, he used all 36 shots in the first hour. Lots of colourful fish and coral. Unfortunatley all fish are protected in this area so you can't catch them and they know it it too.

 Benjamin and I filling up with water from the local bore. Two Emu's often appear when they hear a car turn up for water. It's pretty dry and hence the native animals seize any opportunity to drink water. It just shows how thirsty this emu is even with us around.

 We really were bush camping, no power no showers and only a drop toilet. We bought a handy device which heated the cold water to a comfortable temperature for a shower to wash off the salty water after swimming (seen above). We did a lot of snorkeling and fishing. We also made our way to a little known beach which had 100's of turtles mating in the shore. This poor turtle (below) had no energy left and was resting on the beach.

Benjamin just about to start snorkeling at Turquoise Bay. The beauty about the Ningaloo reef is that it was a short swim to the coral which was great for young kids. The water is so clear and there are no big crowds.

We are now in Coral Bay for 1 week and enjoying more snorkeling and fishing. The caravan park here is very well equipped with a heated pool, 2 great tennis courts, 2 playgrounds and the local shops and beach is across the road. The biggest dilemma in the morning is what to do first. We are also enjoying having  proper showers and toilets, power and internet/ phone coverage after being in the middle of the bush for 8 days.

Keep well everyone, I'm off for a swim!

Broome to Tom Price, WA.

 These photos are out of order so I'll do my best to explain what we've been up to. These photos are at Karijini National Park at Oxer lookout. The views were amazing and photos don't really do it justice.

 The boys walked through water up to waist depth to get to the handrail pool which gave them interesting views.

            There are so many wildflowers at this time of year which make the landscape so pretty.

 We went on a mine tour at Tom Price and above is all of us at the pit lookout. The hole made by mining is huge! The huge "Tonka" truck below has tyres as high as a bus and cost 4.5 million. They have 30 of these working everyday.

 This photo shows the beautiful pool we had at the caravan park at Broome. We kept forgetting to take the camera to the pool and only remembered on the last day of our stay.

 Above and below shows the boys riding along the beach at 80 mile beach. There were so many fantastic shells along the beach and the boys collected a bag full of them.

 At 80 mile beach caravan park we noticed a crowd of people at one campsite and found out they were watching this perentie (goanna) catch, kill and eat this western brown snake. We were told this snake is the 2nd most poisonous in Australia. After this I made sure we kept our tent door zipped up all the time so no snakes could slip into a sleeping bag while we weren't watching.

       We visited Dampier to see the statue of Red Dog which was made famous by the movie.

                        Dales gorge in Karijini NP. This tree hung over the water.

 Our camp site at Karijini NP with our mobile home! We've been putting up the annexe and side walls most times to keep the sun off us. In the shade the weather is nice. Below is the bush cubby that the boys found next to our camp site and added to and enjoyed playing in. They had a pretend camp fire in the cubby. It kept them busy.

 Above is Fern Pool which we all enjoyed swimming in right up to a waterfall. It also acted as a bath as we didn't have showers at the camp site at Karijini NP so that was our way to get clean and cool. Below is the handrail pool the boys had to walk through water to get to.

Finally, an enormous digger at the mine which makes us look like ants. We all enjoyed the mine tour at Tom Price but unfortunately the tour bus broke down and we were left in the bus for 30 minutes in the middle of the mine while another bus came to pick us up. By then we were used to mechanical things going wrong. When leaving Karijini NP our trailer wheel was very wobbly and a campsite volunteer pulled us over out of concern. He thought the bearing was damaged so we pulled into an available camp site and he showed us how to pull off the wheel and inspect the bearing.The bearing had totally disintergrated and we would have ruined the axle if we had tried to drive to Tom Price. We were going to have it looked at on arriving at TP as we didn't know how to fix it. We all drove the 92km's into TP with the hub and broken bearing to find a mechanic who could put a new bearing in it, leaving the trailer at Karijini. We found a very helpful mechanic who luckily had the bearing we needed and installed it into the wheel hub. We then drove back to Karijini and the same man installed it for us showing Steve the whole time what he was doing so he could do it himself next time. Finally we hitched up the camper trailer to the car and drove it into TP and set up for the night. What a day! We actually felt that our good deed of the previous day when we stopped and helped a lady who had a flat tyre was repaid by this helpful man who helped change our bearings. The world works in mysterious ways!
Steve has now taken off the other wheel today to check the bearings and re greese them so that we hopefully won't have that problem again.
We move onto Exmouth tomorrow and can't wait to go snorkelling on Ningaloo Reef.