Monday 29th January

Liz -

We’re still at Coral Bay, I’m afraid no pictures until we move on.  I’ll tell you what we’ve been up too….

We stayed at Monkey Mia for two nights which is within the World Heritage site known as Shark Bay though thankfully it’s not called Shark Bay because of the Sharks although they are present in the shores.  Monkey Mia isn’t a town but a holiday resort that grew popular back in the 1960’s when the visiting dolphins began to regularly visit the bay.  Twelve members of the same family still visit the bay daily and five of which accept food from the rangers.  Within the school of dolphins were three calves one of which was only two weeks old and was adorable.  We were lucky to see the calves as the mothers only have calves once in every four years.  So as to not interfere with their hunting and socialising skills, the rangers only feed them small amounts and are careful not to touch them.  At feeding time they came within just metres of where we were standing and I got to hand feed one of them.  This wasn’t our first encounter with the bottlenose dolphins as we saw them playfully jumping out of the water in the horizon on the afternoon we first stepped on the beach.  We were also just as pleased to see a large turtle swim up close to the shore and poke his head out of the water before disappearing again. 

Later that day Lee and I ventured over to the communial BBQ to cook our burgers we spotted two emus strolling through the park.  As were were sitting there munching on our food, the two emu’s confidentally strolled over eye balling lee’s burger.  It was a battle of the wills for a while which ended in Lee and I grabbing our food and bottle of beer and running to hide in our camper-van, much of the amusement of the other campers!  The emu’s continued to eye ball us eating through the windews but eventually gave up.

The following night was spent further up the coast in a town called Carnarvon.  The holiday brochure claims the town will provide a wonderful holiday experience.  The only highlight we encountered was walking the rickety 100 year old 1 mile jetty and being accompanied back by four manta rays swimming beside us.  Lee was particularly excited at seeing them.    Although we arrived at the town on a Saturday afternoon, it was like a ghost town.  The only places open were the caravan park, the supermarket, the cop shop and the bottle shop.  Needless to say we stayed just one night before moving on to the lovely town of Coral Bay.

Coral Bay is at the southern gateway to the Nigaloo Marine Park and has absolutely gorgeous beaches and a Coral Bay.  We didn’t expect to see beaches like these in Australia.  They’re the sort of beaches you’d expect to see in the Caribbean or the Maldives.  Lee hired snorkel gear this afternoon whilst I preferred to get some shade and read my book.

Tomorrow morning we are getting an early start to start travelling back down the coast to Perth.  This should give us two days with the van in Perth so we can drive round the city suberbs to do our reccie and see where we could afford to live.

p.s. Matty – we knew they were galas really, we were just checking your’e paying attention!  ten out of ten