25th August Ningaloo Reef

Today we wanted to see  the reef,unfortunately though the weather was not the best with the southerly wind blowing quite strongly which wouldn’t be the best for snorkelling on Ningaloo Reef

The communications base

However we made our lunch and set off to explore the area and drive south to the National Park.We drove up to Bundegei  Beach and the Harold Holt Naval Communication Station which is a joint Australian and USA government venture. It is a strictly prohibited area so we kept well clear and only took a few photos of it all before we thought we might be discovered and locked up! We went up to the Vlamingh Head Lighthouse ,where you can get a great view of the reef and then on heading south, past all the beaches, some of which we drove down the sand tracks to check out. With the wind blowing we didn’t see them at the best namely Hunters, Mauritius,Jims and Jansz Beaches.

However it was on to the Cape Range National Park and the Ningaloo Marine Park which are collectively known as the parks of the Coral Coast.They support a range of wild life habitats from the ocean reef. We saw emus, seabirds and the odd kangaroo. We stopped off at the Milyering Visitor Centre where we were advised that the best place to snorkel for the conditions was at Turquoise Bay, so we headed for there to have our lunch . Here we saw a few swimmers doing the drift snorkel where they entered the water with their noodles for buoyancy and basically drifted  with the tide and wind over the reef for about 5oo mtrs. It all looked pretty good, however we decided to wait until the water wasn’t so choppy and would be a little clearer.

We continued on to Yardie Creek which is a far south as we were going which is about 90 km south of Exmouth.This is a spectacular gorge which boasts a great amount of birdlife and rock wallabies. We scanned the cliff faces and saw the birds but were unable to see the wallabies.

 

The start of the sand track down the Ningaloo Road on the west coastline to Coral Bay and the water crossing at the start that can sometimes be almost impossible to cross depending on the tides and weather  etc.

It had been a long day so we started for home which was now a drive of about 120km until we could get back to our Jayco to have dinner and settle down for evening.