Coral Bay and Exmouth

The next drive north took us to Coral Bay, which is about 150km off the main highway north and approximately 1100 km north of Perth. It's a tiny little holiday town with a couple of caravan parks, and a couple of hotels. Despite this, it is quite commercial as it is the hub for tours out to the Ningaloo Reef to swim with turtles, manta rays and whale sharks. The cost of a swim with the whale sharks was a major disincentive ($1600 per family for an 8 hour cruise!), but we did hope to go out and see the manta rays. Unfortunately it was windy and choppy, so we decided against it. Despite this, we enjoyed Coral Bay - we enjoyed snorkeling in the warm water amongst the stingrays, and particularly enjoyed some 4WD'ing through the sand dunes to explore some of the more remote beaches with another family (sorry, we forgot to take our camera with us on that adventure!).

It was short drive (150km) up the coast from Coral Bay to Exmouth. We passed straight through Exmouth on our way out to Cape Range National Park, about 50km. Caper Range is right on the Ningaloo Reef and is absolutely beautiful. The camping is on the beach, but very basic with pit toilets and no running water. From beaches such as Turquoise Bay and Lakeside, you cam swim 50 meters off shore and be surrounds by coral, fish, turtles, stingrays and sharks. Justin was lucky enough to swim with a turtle, while the girls saw some really large stingrays and a reef shark swimming a few meters off the shore. We spent 3 nights camping out in the national park, and (despite the 38 degree heat) really loved it. There were many other families out there, and the girls particularly loved the daily ritual of 6pm drinks where everyone at our campsite got together to watch the sun go down and compare notes from the day's snorkeling.

After a few days of rough camping we were ready to head into the Big 4 caravan park at Exmouth to clean up, shower, charge batteries and fill water tanks - ready for the next leg of the journey inland to Tom Price and Karijini National Park.
Photos below are-
1-4: Underwater scenes at Coral Bay and Cape Range (Ningaloo Reef)
5: Justin's turtle
6: Playing on the beach at sunset
7-8: Our campsite at Cape Range National Park (no shade, so a bit hot in the middle of the day!)