Day 85 – Osprey Bay to Coral Bay

What a place to wake up in. Couldn’t have coffee and breakfast in a nicer spot.
After brekkie we drive about 10km further south and take a short walk up beside Yardie Creek and the start of Yardie Gorge. There are boat trips up the gorge, but they are later in the day.

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Back to the van and we’re in no rush to pack up. So we soak up the place until we finally leave at 10.

Not long after we take off this morning, we finally spot a dingo – incredibly, it’s the first one we’ve seen on the whole trip. Along with kangaroos hopping everywhere (not), we thought there would be dingos around every corner. Not so.

We drive back around the top of the cape again, a stop in Exmouth for lunch, the bakery there makes great pies.

A short detour to Learmonth pier, as you are meant to be able to see a bit of marine life from there. A few people are fishing, but there is not too much life around today.

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The landscape between Exmouth and Coral bay is pretty barren, so there’s not a heap to look at on the drive.

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By mid-afternoon we make it into Coral Bay. As we drive into town, it feels like we are already in the caravan park – it looks and feels a bit like Toy Town, or a movie-set. It feels a bit contrived, like a purpose built tourist village, without the authenticity of an original settlement. But we are here, so we book into the local van park just by the beach.

Swimmers on and snorkelling gear ready we walk down. This bay is beautiful and the water colour is amazing. The tide here doesn’t move too much, between .5 – 1mt so it does matter too much that it’s low tide.

It’s pretty windy, so as we walk further around the bay we are practically sandblasted. But we make it to the water and are certainly rewarded. I can see why this place is called Coral Bay. Not more than 2-3mts off the edge of the sand bar there are these large coral outcrops. And fish? There are heaps and some really large ones too, we see at least three or four over 60cm in length. The coral is not super colourful, but it certainly is abundant and so easy to get to.

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The kids have had enough, what with being sandblasted on the beach, so we head back for a shower – an actual HOT shower, it’s finally cool enough to turn up the heat in the shower., how nice!.

Once cleaned up, we head out to find a viewing area over at Skeleton Bay, a reef shark nursery. The bay itself is not really shown on the map, but we follow the directions on Wiki Camps. The info seems right, but turns out the local council has closed all of the tracks through the dunes – there is no way through. Apparently you can walk around via the beach – we will try that in the morning.

Finally a quick walk up to the local lookout

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