Coral Bay, WA

Our next stop was at Coral Bay, which was only about 150kms south, mostly down the Exmouth to Minilya Road before turning west for 12 kms into Coral Bay at the end. Even though Coral Bay is a small town there are two large caravan parks and a resort for visitors. We stayed at Ningaloo Coral Bay which was well set up, although we soon discovered that you needed to buy drinking water as the local water is quite saline. After setting up the caravan we ate lunch and took an exploratory walk. I noted a very well supplied bakery in amongst the shops and diving gear store. From the shops we walked down to the bay. The tide was definitely out.

At the end of the bay we continued past a rock outcrop and from there made our way up to a viewpoint. As you can see there were lots of water based activities to be done.

As usual we were on the lookout for flowering plants as we made our way back down. Sadly we only found this native grass.We checked out the resort restaurant on our way back. The menu looked like we could be enticed there for dinner one night. We had a drink back at the caravan but didn’t notice how quickly time was going and missed seeing the sun actually set but the twilight sky was still worth a look.

The following day Karen hired a wetsuit so she could go snorkelling multiple times during the day depending on the tide. The noodle is also helpful as you can just float whilst observing the underwater world and not have to worry about swimming, something that helped me when I went in later.

Early on the tide was in so she spent quite a while snorkelling around as one section of the bay was a bit like a large fishbowl.Mind you, snorkellers had to be wary of kayakers and stand-up paddle boarders as they swam around looking at the coral and fish.

After exhausting herself Karen let me have a turn with the snorkel gear. Then we headed to the bakery and back to the caravan for a late lunch. Along the way we did find this flowering carpobrotus.