Exmouth

Our Caravan...ooh and view!!



What can I say about the joint but "Bloody Awesome"!! The people there (in the other 6 campsites) were all great as we kept our 5pm drinks chat every day of the 20 days we spent there. Duncan and Dorothy from Canada were next to us and we look forward to meeting up with them back in Sydney. Phil and Trish, all the way from....Collaroy Plateau ensured there was plenty of laughs and Dillon (the crazy pom) who kept on trying to get me to do a night dive with him with a taped up torch (he did go out by himself with me on the beach with my torch as a rescue back up-2 nights, 3 sharks, 20m off the beach...not for me)

The place is undoubtedly Australia’s tropical paradise straight from the road and our campsite. The kids have had a ball and experienced so much. Just having this pristine coral right in front of our campsite was just awesome. In the end we knew where the giant cod were, the sharks homes where they slept (until you grab their tail!!), the different types of Nemo`s, where the stingrays hang out, the coral trout, spangled emperor, moorish idol, black anthea's, barracuda school was, giant/silver/golden trevally were but every snorkle produced something new each time. The sharks were a highlight for me as well as patting the turtles as they fed on the bottom. No wonder the sharks were scared!



Find the sharks fin??



The other beaches such as Torquoise and Sandy were straight from a post card and only a short drive from our campsite. We actually didn`t get to all of the other spots because we were so happy with our spot. Not only the marine animals, but the furry, feathered, scaly and crabby varieties visited us daily. I drove early (6.30am) one morn and counted 26 kangaroos from our campsite to the main road 300m up the track. We had to get water from a bore regularly which was a 5 min drive away and there was always resident emu's and kangaroos there. We had a brown snake take up residence next to our camp dunny that made for some quick pit stops and these big crabs would walk around the place at night. One of our nightly visitors Emu getting hassled in town- Exmouth-yep Emu's walk around town!



A lot of days we got some strong breeze from the south, which made the water a bit murky and quite sharky as we found lots of them and different kinds, but when it died or turned offshore the place was magic. There plenty of funny moments such as when Bailey was snorkling with me and thought it would be funny to stick a sea slug up my boardies, when an echidna decided to just charge on by the camp or when this frenchman thought that swimming 3k's "out to the waves that were breaking" was the only way to see coral.....Duncan and I actually grabbed the kayak and paddled out to see if he was alright. Watching visitors to "our coral reef" was funny when we would say 'have a look under this over-hang...knowing full well that was where a shark was!!



A highlight was our second last day when Lisa, Ellie and I paddled out in the kayak to watch the turtles and bumped into the dolphins that were happy to play with us. Having Petra and her 2 boys, Will and Jack, stay with us here was great as well....the boys won't forget crab-hunting at night!! Kayaking off our camp...

I loved it you could say!!!

p.s. we also did some repairs

Exmouth

We have been in Cape Range national Park for 20 days and its time to move on (reluctantly for Craig, he could have stayed longer!). I have found it a little hard not having electricity, running water, showers and phone reception for this long. Ive got itchy feet!

It has been amazing and so far the best place we have been. Lucky for us we chose a great spot to stay for the whole school holidays. We have been snorkelling and swimming each day and the weather has been perfect (except for some pretty strong winds at times). We have camped with some really lovely people and it seems everyone is heading south so we are sure to meet up with them along the way. We have seen emu’s, kangaroo’s, echidna’s, shark’s, tropical fish, sting ray’s, turtle’s, whales, dolphins and even one tiny legless lizard. We also saw our first Brown snake which made its home in a hole just near the toilet, apparently the fire brigade were going to come and relocate it but they never showed up. We were all a bit on edge each time we needed to go.

Here are a few more pics of our last few days: Craig and the boys snorkelling:





Craig saw sharks on every single dive trip, the more he talked about them the more I stayed out of the water! Reef shark:





Yesterday was the highlight of the trip so far. We borrowed Phil and Trish's kayak (they live at Colloroy Plateau, small country!) and went for a look around. Within a few minutes we saw massive turtles which were scared off pretty easily. Cant believe how quickly they can swim!

We then saw a massive sting ray asleep on the bottom:



Then next thing we know there are dolphins swimming right in front of us. We paddled closer and they came over for a look. There was a mother and a baby and further away was another dolphin that didnt come closer to us. They were amazing and hung around for a while. I have never been that close to dolphins in my life so it was just beautiful. Some pics from the kayak:

















We only had our camera but I managed to take a short amount of video from the camera which turned out surprisingly ok:





Here are our lovely neighbours Duncan and Dorothy, travelling Australia from Canada. Hopefully we meet up with them when they arrive in Sydney, such a great couple.







Off to Coral Bay next to catch up on about a thousand emails from the last 2 weeks!