Ningaloo Reef by Sue

From Karratha we headed down the road had a freebie overnight camp and then a quick stop in Exmouth before heading out to Yardie Homestead caravan park just outside Cape Range NP. Now for those who haven’t been clever enough to prebook a campsite (like us) you get to go and line up at the crack of dawn to try and get one in the NP. I was very clever and stayed in bed while Woodsy did this with Samuel, managing to dodge 2 kangaroos on the way……… number 3 wasn’t so lucky! but managed to hop off. Anyway the boys were 2^nd in line at 5.30am and scored a great campsite with shade and a view of the beach. So we stayed for 3 nights then another 3, then another 1 and then just 1 more night. What a fantastic place. Beautiful beaches, amazing snorkelling(Oyster stacks,  Turquoise Bay and Lakeside), coral gardens, tropical fish, turtles, rays, gorges, our friends the Scheffers put their boat in a few times off our beach so we even got to out and enjoy the reef from a boat as well. Just to top it all off all the very social people we have met recently were all staying close by so we had lots of great company thanks to the Scheffers, Harveys and McLeans. The kids had a ball playing in the beach out the front of our campsite.

 breakfast at the rangers station......2nd in line at 5.30!!! but totally worth it with a beaut camp

 snorkeling oysters stack

 Harveys and Scheffers and Woods' at Mesa

 nice sunsets at Mesa

 Yardie creek

 black tailed rock wallaby

 view from our camp

 camp, this is one of very few with shade in the NP

 "our" beach

 out in the boat on the lagoon

 turtles at the sancturary

 turtle egg

 I borrowed a camera!

 turquoise bay bay

 loading the boat

nice day's fishing by our neighbors

From Cape Range we headed down to Coral Bay and the poor SSangyong struck out for the first time as we crossed Yardie creek and stayed there half way across, stuck in the sand. Unhooked the trailer and she popped out no worries while a nice bloke in a Landrover cross monster truck came and rescued our trailer………most embarrassing.  Kids thought it was a great adventure. We enjoyed Coral bay, (especially a nice long shower after using the shower tent for a week) though the snorkelling was not as specky as Cape range. The kids had some great diary entries for all this so I have popped them below……….enjoy!

stuck in yardie creek

tow vehicle.....did the job

coral bay

fish feeding at coral bay