Coral Bay

26th October

Coral Bay is a small one street town on the coast between Exmouth and Carnavon. As its name suggests it has a bay full of coral. You can snorkel straight off the sandy white beach or walk around the point and do a gentle drift around into the bay.

The coral near the edge are unusual as they look like huge heads of lettuce. Further out in the bay is one of the prettiest coral gardens I have ever seen. So much colour and diversity of coral. And there is a huge coral bombie they have nicknamed “Ayres Rock” because it’s so big. The rock is home to some big cod and gropers and lots of other pretty little fish. The beach is white and sandy and a nice place just to hang out.

 

 

The north of the bay is a renowned reef shark breeding area. You can walk along the shore and see dozens of black tip reef sharks swimming in the shallows. There were more than 30 the day we went around there. There were dozens of blue spotted rays sitting in the shallows too.

 

We spent a few days exploring the coast to the north and south via some very sandy 4WD tracks behind the dunes. It was a bit of an adventure trying to find our way, but we had fun, saw some nice scenery, helped some people get un-bogged and had a lovely snorkel at “5 finger reef”.

 

 

We also did a day trip to Waroora Station where some friends were camped on the beach. We got there just in time to see one of them get a huge bite on his line and watched him bring in this big reef shark. It fought and jumped and twisted so it was a great spectacle. Lucky the shark got loose just as he pulled him onto the shore so they didn’t have to try and unhook him.

 

On the way back to Coral Bay we saw these two big kangas having a tussle and got a lovely sunset.

 

The kids were loving being in a proper caravan park, playing on the jumping pillow and lots of other kids to play with. We also had a fun afternoon at one of the local pubs where the kids spent most of the afternoon playing footy on the grass and hung out with friends at the beach.

Sunsets were lovely, which we watched from the bay most afternoons.