Step 68 Point Quobba – Coral Bay 265 km's

Wednesday 25^th May – Wednesday 1^st June

Well this is it. We have found paradise. We have found our favourite spot. We have ARRIVED. Coral Bay.

It's not exactly a town, I'm not sure that it qualifies as a village. Maybe a hamlet? Two caravan parks (each with it's own set of shops and tour operators), a backpackers hostel, a pub/hotel. But the setting is just magic. A lovely bay, white sand beach and 5-10 metres off the beach the Ningaloo (Coral) Reef. Honestly you walk into the water up to your knees and you are surrounded by fish. You step off the sand bar and you are drifting over the coral. To top it all off, you don't even have to swim because the current drags you slowly along the beach. Did I mention we found Paradise.

Actually, when I say "we found" paradise I must admit mum and dad, V & H and others have been telling us about this area for years. But we finally found it for ourselves. 

Seriously, this is standing knee deep in the water.
These fishies obviously know this is a protected zone 

 So what have we done all week:

• Walk along the beach
• Swim and snorkel over the reef
• Seen more fish and more different types of fish than ever before
  • including some of the biggest snapper ever
• Paddle a glass bottom kayak over the reef
  • that would be: Steve paddle. But Di did help by letting me know which direction to paddle in to see the coral
• Walk through the dunes
• Watch the sunset (missed the sunrises. All of them)
• Nightime star gazing
  • twinkle twinkle type stars, not Jennifer Aniston type stars
• Wine O'clock
• Eat seafood
• Chat
• Relax on the beach

For each day pick 6 to 8 items off the list above and then repeat the next day.

Highlights:

• The fish that swim right up to you. (just taunting you, because they know it's a marine park and you can't catch them).
  • huge spanglies
    • for you non-fishing folk that's Spangled Emperor or Western Snapper
    • as a non-fisherman you can trust me when I say that they were all over 7kg's and the last one we saw must have been 15kg's at least
  • manta rays (they are stingrays but without the sting)
  • little electric blue fish (latin name electricus blue-ous)
  • wrasse – know to me as the big bright green fish
  • sausage fish
  • zebra fish (Latin: collingwoodus fishus)
  • parrot fish
  • ghost fish
  • black spot yellow fish (that might not be the technical name, but that's what they were)
  • giant clams – noooo I'm having flashbacks to 20,000 leagues under the sea, or was that a giant squid. Whatever, don't put your foot IN the clam

• Eating the scallops, prawns and snapper from Carnarvon, just beautiful
• Our neighbours on the left are serious fishermen. They have been going out for 10 hours a day and fishing in 130 meter deep water miles off the coast. Feeling sorry for us as non-fisher-people they gave us a large pack of Spanish Mackerel (beautifully filleted). Another first for the kendall kitchen and again just superb. Simply shallow fried in olive oil with salt and pepper to season.

  The pack lasted us for two nights!

  
  
  
  
• The bakery across the road
  • beautiful fresh whole grain bread
  • lamingtons
  • blueberry crumble (and ice cream)

Spanglies everywhere
OK, the fish in this picture not be spanglies but they are big fish
and they look tasty. We did see spanglies at some point.

These fish missed the sign that said:
If you swim past this point you are not protected anymore

No flapping from Di this time
On the other hand she is a long way from becoming Steve Irwin
and she was long way from this lizard when I took the photo

Steve's walk to the boat ramp
The guy out the back lied - it was more than a 20 minute walk !

Looks like a 4WD came this way - must be careful
Hang on, that single line looks like - a SNAKE trail
Walk faster Steve

Swim with the Whale sharks – NO

But Steve, Coral Bay and Exmouth are famous for swimming with the Whale sharks
Yes, but our new motto is: Never swim with anything bigger than you can eat in one sitting.

View from the glass bottom kayak.
The coral at the bottom looked like a geranium
I named it - Geranium Coral

Similarly this shall be called "electric blue finger coral"

Sponge coral

Lowlights:

• On Monday we felt like John Milton
  • You know John Milton, he published Paradise Lost in 1667, probably in December
  • Too dramatic? Paradise lost? Couldn't you just say it rained Steve? Well however you describe it, it wasn't good. But it was only for an hour or so in the afternoon. We still got to eat dinner outside.
  • The good news for dedicated followers of the blog is that the rain gave me a chance to catch up a bit. Hence the flurry of activity a couple of days ago (as you read this).

Editors note:

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 (though written nearly ten years earlier) in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse.

In some respects this blog is becoming an epic in itself and nearly as long as Milton's work

• Our chairs broke. Well the backs did. I think maybe that leaving them out in the rain at Kalbarri may not have helped.
  • Never mind, I fixed them with gaffer tape
• Our chairs broke again, maybe gaffer tape wasn't the answer – Herb, heeeeelp.
• So I guess in the immortal words of the Chairman of the Board, Mr Francis Albert Sinatra:
• “Regrets, I've had a few. But then again too few to mention”
• Well apart from the couple above, which I did mention

So that was the week that was, Coral Bay, definitely our favourite spot so far. But don't tell everybody, we don't want it to get spoiled. Finished off the week by popping down to the pub on Tuesday night for Happy Hour and “the best burgers in town”. Not sure if anywhere else in town does burgers, but they were very good anyway and $9.80 for a schooner of Carlton Draught and a piccolo of Yellow (small bottle of Champagne for the uninitiated) seemed very reasonable.

You don't need a big one to catch fish at Coral Bay
Boat
You don't need a big boat