HOUSE CREEK CAMP TO GERALDTON

Saturday morning we packed up and drove to Exmouth about 343km away. I stopped at Nannutarra for fuel and paid $1.75 per litre for Diesel. About 20km out of Exmouth, we stopped at the Prawn co-op and bought some prawns for dinner at $14.00 per kg for nice sized prawns. Shopped at Exmouth and then went out to the Lighthouse Caravan Park on the headland.

The Wynn’s product that we put in Markus’ Landcruiser seems to be working and has reduced the leaking oil considerably.

Sunday we drove around the area, went up to the Lighthouse to see the great view, you can see the Ningaloo reef to the west and Exmouth in the south east; to the east you can see the Navy Radio Communications Station. We drove down along the western shore for about 30km. We had a look at Mangrove Bay, T-Bone, Lakeside and a couple of other areas. We went skin diving at Lakeside, the water is warm and there was about 15m visibility, we didn’t see a lot as it was low tide. At sunset we went up to the Lighthouse and rang Karen as it is her birthday tomorrow.

LIGHTHOUSE EXMOUTH

We also met Les & Yvonne who were next to us in Broome; they are from Hervey Bay in Qld.

Monday Markus, Anna & Mona went scuba diving at the Navy Peer; it is one of the 10 best dives in the world. They had a great time and recommended that I do a refresher course and do the dive also. Florent and I went fishing at the Mildura wreck and then fished south of town on the beach. It is Anna’s birthday today and we surprised her with decorations around their camp. Diane cooked a lovely baked Dinner for our evening meal, they all enjoyed it and Anna thanked us for one of her best Birthdays ever. We all had a good day.

Tuesday we were going to service Markus’ car but when we went to town to buy the parts needed the Autopro shop was shut for Melbourne Cup Day. Diane and I drove around past the marina and then down to Pebble Beach for a look. Pebble Beach is correctly named as it is full of Pebbles. By the time we arrived back at camp it was 1.25pm and we missed the Melbourne Cup by about 5 minutes. Diane had a rest in the afternoon and I watched a movie. I’m having trouble with the free to air decoder at the present; all the channels are scrambled so I will have to ring Johnny’s Electronics for some help. I went up to the lighthouse just before sunset to take some photos and to download our E-mails, Not a great sunset.

Wednesday and Thursday I serviced Markus’ car first with plugs, point, oil filter, fuel filter and cleaned the air filter. We found that the front torsion bar had a broken bracket and on Thursday morning I went to town to get another one but there is no Toyota dealer in town and it would take 3 days to come from Perth. I went out to the Rubbish dump and found a bracket on an old car so we modified it to fit. Whilst I was installing the bracket I found that the steering linkages were badly worn. After investigations in town it would be Friday week before they could replace the parts. We decided to wire the parts so that they couldn’t fall apart and made a booking in Carnarvon for Friday week to repair the steering.

The wind has been blowing fairly continuously over the past few days so we stayed around camp for the rest of the time, although I also repaired one of the runners on Florent’s fishing rod.

It’s now Friday 9/11/2007; today we investigated the Cape Range National Park and Ningaloo Reef. Our first stop was the Milyering Visitor Centre where we watched a DVD on Ningaloo reef and looked at their displays. It was 74km from our Caravan Park down to Yardie Creek that is at the end of the National Park. We helped get a Britz 4wd out of the sand whilst we were there, the entrance to the creek is out of the water at low tide and you can drive across it and proceed down to Coral Bay along the coast. We took some photos and then headed back up along the coast.

NINGALOO REEF AREA

We stopped at Bungarra, Osprey Bay, Sandy Bay, Pilgramunna, Bloodwood Creek, South Mandu and Oyster Stacks. We had lunch on the beach at Oyster Stacks and then went for a Snorkel around the Coral, it was only just over 1metre deep but the coral and the fish were magnificent. We even saw a black tip shark as well as many species of fish all beautifully coloured.

After the Oyster Stacks we visited Turquoise Bay that is as it sounds Turquoise in colour with dark patches scattered around, the dark patches are coral or weed beds that hold all varieties of fish. We saw more varieties of fish at Oyster Stacks than at Turquoise Bay but Turquoise Bay is easier to enter the water and is a good swimming beach with nice sand for sunbaking.

We left Turquoise Bay at 5.00pm and on the way home visited Tulki Beach Camp. Most of the other stops we had visited on our previous visit to the Park so we drove back to the Lighthouse to get our phone messages and then back to camp. It was a great day. Tomorrow I will be going on the Navy Jetty Pier scuba dive at 1.30pm until 6.30pm and I’m looking forward to it as it is supposed to be one of the 10 best dives in the world, more on that tomorrow.

Well I can agree on one of the best dives without doubt the best dive that I have been on. It has a maximum depth of 14 metres and I would have been down to 12metres. The visibility was between 10 and 12 metres. You could actually see fish from the Jetty before we even entered the water. There were schools of big trevally, barracouta and schools of other fish that thick that you couldn’t see through them. We saw two Grey Nurse Sharks a huge Wobbegong shark some large Groper and a huge Cod. The water was 23 degrees and with the wetsuit on you didn’t get cold. We would have been down there for about 40 minutes and didn’t won’t to come up. I arrived back at camp at 7.15pm after a great afternoon.

NAVY PIER DIVE
Sunday morning and it is time to move on but I can only say that Exmouth is certainly worth a visit for anyone interested in water activities. We took our time in packing up as Markus, Anna and Mona will be travelling with us for a while yet and it takes them a bit longer than us to pack all their gear which is understandable. We then drove into Exmouth to do some grocery shopping, fuel up and to say goodbye to Florent as he is staying in Exmouth to get a job as he is running out of money. It was sad for the Kids as they had spent the last 15000km together travelling around the top end.

We left Exmouth at 11.10am heading for Coral Bay, Coral Bay is only 157km from Exmouth with a population of 150 people and is situated on the coast it is protected by Coral reef 250km long, a beautiful spot very resort originated but still nice and small the Caravan Park has 218 sites and would be crowded in the tourist season.

After setting up camp Diane and I went for our usual tour of the town that didn’t take long and then for a walk on the beach, the beach is great for small children at high tide as there is a nice shallow area before it drops off into deeper water. The boat ramp facility is huge and has room for many boats.

I had a chat to our next door campers, Gavin, Nicole and their son Lachlan in the afternoon and Gavin invited us out fishing on his 5.6 Bow Runner Boat tomorrow. Diane said that she would stay at home and to ask Markus if he would like to come which he anxiously agreed to do. Markus and I were both looking forward to tomorrows fishing trip.

CORAL BAY

Monday morning and breakfast over we left the camp at 8.00am to go fishing the wind has been blowing off and on all night but we said we would have a look at the conditions outside the reef. Once you launch the boat you have to follow a passage out through the coral and this passage is about 8km long and the entrance or exit through the coral is only about 20m wide. Through the reef it seemed to be OK but after trolling for about 10 minutes while we were looking for somewhere to fish the wind sprang up again and as we were the only boat out through the reef we decided to come back inside the reef to fish in calmer water.

There is a huge Sanctuary zone inside the reef and you have to careful not to be fishing inside this zone as they police it very well, there was a plane flying overhead most of the time we were out there. The water was that clear that you could still see the bottom quite clearly at 5m and at 2m you could see the fish swimming around the coral. We lost a lot of gear on the coral, Gavin caught about 4 undersized fish, some were beautifully coloured and one was a remora about 40cm, Markus caught a couple of small fish and a 74cm Puffer Toad fish, although it is not an eatable fish it gave him a nice fight and it was a thrill for him as it was the biggest fish that he has caught, he was thrilled, I caught zip!

We spent the afternoon around camp, I couldn’t get into the Caravan at first as Diane had the key and Anna, Mona and Di were at the beach sunbaking. We met some Canadian backpackers, their car was broken down so Gavin and I dismantled the timing cover and found out that the water pump had seized and broke the timing belt. They are going to decide tomorrow if they are going to fix the car or just sell it off and catch the bus to Perth.

Well I’m a bit more computer literate now as Markus has shown me how to set up a BLOG page on the computer so tomorrow I’m going to start building my Blog so stay tuned.

Diane has reached her goal weight of 67kg today; she has done a marvellous job sticking to her diet and can now start her re-feeding program. She is looking great and the best she has been for years.

Tuesday 13/11 we went up to a bay that is about a 20 minute walk up along the beach and is a nursery for reef sharks, the water is shallow and you can see the sharks in the water, there would have been about 12 to 14 sharks and some sting rays there. We sat on the beach and watched them for a couple of hours.

SHARKS

Markus and I left Diane, Anna and Mona on the beach to sunbake and we went back to the caravan to do some more of my Blog. I was able to post the first 11 pages of my diary today. I rang the kids for them to comment on the Blog. Melissa sent a message to say that I spelt Rachel’s name wrong, I don’t know why but I have corrected it now.

We had a phone call from the man in Carnarvon who was trying to get the parts for Markus’ steering; he said that he couldn’t find the parts. We then rang O’Brien’s 4wd centre in Geraldton and he said that he had the parts for $196.00 plus it would cost $16.00 for postage. Gavin suggested that we try E-Bay, we found the parts at East Coast 4wd centre in Chipping Norton NSW for $70.00 plus $10.00 express post. The parts left Sydney on Tuesday and they were received at the Post Office on Thursday in Carnarvon.

Markus and I played Diane and Anna in a game of Canasta, the boys won 2 games. Florent text a message to us to say that he has a job on the Pearl Boats and that he will be flying out to the boat tomorrow.

Wednesday Markus and I went fishing at 6.45am until 10.00am; we went down to the boat ramp and fished from the wall. We could see the fish in the water as it is so clear; they were all around our baits but just wouldn’t bite. We then went home for breakfast. I had to clear our sink drain in the caravan as it was blocked, I flushed it with the hose and found that it was blocked with shells that Diane had been washing and got stuck in the drain pipe.

I watched a movie that Markus had downloaded to our memory stick. We put the stick straight into our new TV that has a USB port and it played the movie with no problems.

The Canadians got their parts today for their car and the mechanic fitted them this afternoon, they will leave here tomorrow. We had another game of canasta this afternoon, the boys won again.

Thursday morning I went fishing with Markus at 6.00am, we went south along the beach, the water here is so clear and warm that you can actually see the fish around your bait. I hooked a 2.0/2.5m shark for about 2 seconds and then I caught a small striped trevally.

I rang Rachel while I was at the Beach and apologised for spelling her name wrong, but she hadn’t read that part yet, Charlie didn’t want to talk to me as he was watching cartoons when Rachel asked him if he wanted to speak to Dah, he simply said “No thank you” and kept on with his cartoons. We arrived home for breakfast at 9.00am. The Canadians came over to say goodbye and left about 11.00am.

We all went snorkelling down at the beach, it was great, saw various shapes and colours of Coral and fish. There was a cowrie shell on the bottom that was at least 300mm long, I have never seen one that big. Diane said that it was one of the best day’s snorkelling that she has had and won’t forget it.

I then went back to the caravan and finished the next part of my BLOG; it took all afternoon to upload about 40 pictures and to paginate the document before posting it to the web. We are leaving tomorrow and going to Carnarvon to pick up our mail and to get the parts for Markus’ steering. Their steering tie rod end are very bad and I’m worried that they may fall off and that will leave them without any steering. I will tie the joints with stainless steel cable ties before we leave.

Friday morning before we left Coral Bay I went for a quick drive out to the Dump and found a fold-up chair that only needed two bolts and a screw to fix it, the kids have broken one of their chairs and had thrown it away before we met them.

Coral Bay is a beautiful spot and we will certainly come back here some day, we drove past the beach for our last look before leaving town, it is 237km to Carnarvon and we left Coral Bay at 9.50am. On the way we were talking to a man (Jim) on the radio, we were telling him about Markus’ parts problem and he said that would be right in Western Australia WA stands for Wait Awhile, he said it can take up to a months sometimes for parts. He also gave us the name of a man (Barry) at the Carnarvon Pet Food Supplies that would let us use his workshop if necessary.
We had no trouble with Markus’ steering on the way and arrived at Carnarvon at 12.45pm, we checked into the Wintersun Caravan Park before going to the Post Office to get our mail. Diane’s tablets haven’t arrived at the Post Office so we are having them redirected to Geraldton.

Started on Markus’ steering at 3.15pm, we had some trouble unscrewing one of the joint and had to ask the Park Owners if we could use their vice in their shed as the Carnarvon Pet Food supplies would have been closed. It was 6.00pm when we used the vice and we were able to free the joint and remove the old part. It didn’t take long to re-assemble the steering- linkages, once it was complete we went for a test drive and found that the steering was still wondering across the road. On further investigation we think that two of the new joints have to be filled with grease and adjusted to take out the slackness in the joint. It was getting dark so we decided to wait until tomorrow to grease and adjust these joints.
CARNARVON

17/11/2007 Only 31 days until we head home for Christmas! I greased and adjusted Markus’ steering and it is now fine, we tried to get a wheel alignment done on it but we would have to wait until Monday and Markus and crew don’t want to wait that long as Anna has to fly out of Perth on 3/12 and they have a lot to see before they get there.

Mona helped me wash the car, it was covered in salt from the water and salt in the air from Exmouth and Coral Bay. I couldn’t wash it at either of these towns as their water is salty bore water.

North of town there are some blow holes and a memorial to the HMAS Sydney II that was sunk by a German Battle ship off the Western Australian coast in 1941 killing the whole crew of 645 men. The German ship also sunk but some of its crew survived and were later saved.

The blow hole was spectacular and working well it was a windy day and the sea was fairly rough. The car had salt spray on it from the blow holes so we had to wash it again when we arrived home and we also washed the Caravan, it was very dirty also. We had our dinner in the camp kitchen with the kids and then went to bed.
BLOW HOLE

Sunday we are going to Denham today it is 320km from Carnarvon. Left Carnarvon at 10.30am and we stopped at Overlander roadhouse for lunch. The roadhouse is at the junction where we turn off to Denham that is 129km back up along the coast. The views as we headed up the peninsula were brilliant, the colours stunning and we are looking forward to investigate this area more.

The wind has been blowing all day and when we booked into the Denham Seaside Park we were told that the wind will get up to 30 knots per hour by Wednesday night. During the afternoon Diane & I went for a walk along the main street stopping at the hotel for a drink in the most Western Pub in Australia. It is a credit to the town; the main street has the water and a park running down one side of the street and the shops facing the water on the other side.
DENHAM

On Monday morning I thought that I would try and fix our free to air TV reception first before we did anything else, I rang Johnny’s Electronics in Katherine and he said it looks like the free to air card in the decoder is faulty and to send it back and he will send us another one.

Today we are going to the Francois Peron National Park that consists of the whole of Cape Peron Peninsula above Denham. We visited the original Homestead and shearing sheds of this sheep property as it was before it became National Park. After the Homestead the road becomes a 4WD track, sandy of varying degrees of thickness for the whole way and is only a car width wide, if you meet someone coming the other way one of you have to find a place to pull off the road.
About 8km along the track I hit an Emu and it had a broken leg plus some internal injuries, we rang the Department of Conservation and Development and they sent a Ranger (Ross) out to put the bird down. We waited for him to arrive and as it was going to take half an hour we decided to have lunch while we waited. By the time Ross arrived the bird had died so we just dragged it off the track. Ross said that they don’t have facilities to help injured animals anyway.

After this ordeal we went to Big Lagoon and then up to the tip of Cape Peron where we went for a 3km walk around the Cape to Skipjack Point and back. The views were great and there were a lot of signs giving us information about the area. On the way back we visited Bottle Bay, Gregories beach and Herald Bluff. Herald Bluff was the nicest of the three areas and they have done a lot of fishing in this area since the early 1900’s at one stage they had a fish cannery on the beach that was converted to a freezer, this all happened between 1933 and 1938. There are still fishing boats moored in the Bay today. We arrived back at camp at about 6.00pm after a great day.









FRANCOIS PERON NATIONAL PARK

The wind has been relentless all day and the only good thing about it is that it keeps the flies to a minimum, but they are still annoying. The Wind is supposed to peak tonight at 38 knots and then slowly recede over the next few days.

I usually write my diary and name our photos early in the morning it is now Tuesday morning and I have a lot of photos to rename and to put them in to folders and I have some diary to write. By the time that I had finished the above tasks and had breakfast it was about 9.30am. We were waiting for the kids so that we could go to Monkey Mia for the day.

Monkey Mia is only 29km away on the eastern side of the Peninsula, when we arrived the gate keeper said that the Dolphins had already been fed for the day. There is a $6.00 per head entry fee into the Resort, it is a beautiful spot so we went in for a look around and had our lunch in one of the beach shelters. While we were there we decided to come back tomorrow early to see the Dolphins being fed and to go for a sail on the 60’ catamaran called “Shotover”. Shotover is a racing Cat that has a 70’ mast, the mast is off the Sydney to Hobart Yacht “Gretel” and the boat holds the record for sailing from Australia to the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. It completed the journey in 96 hours on the front of a cyclone; the average speed for the trip was 15 knots. The fastest they have been able to achieve is 35 knots.

On the way home we took some photos of the Main Street of Denham and Diane bought some shirts and hats for the Grandkids. The wind has come up again this afternoon and would be about 20 knots.

We were up at 5.30am on the 21/11/07 it was George’s 5th Birthday so we rang him at 5.45am which is 7.45am on the east coast, they had been to McDonalds for breakfast and were on their way home. It was good to have a video call so that we could see them all on this special day; we are looking forward to our trip home next month to see everyone. Today we are going to have a big day, we want to be out at Monkey Mia by 7.30am to see the Dolphins being fed, then at 1.00pm we are going on the “Shotover” for a 2.5 hour cruise and then at 5.00pm we are going on another sail on the “Shortover” for 1.5 hours.







MONKEY MIA

The dolphin feeding was great they fed them 3 times, the dolphins came into the beach and they played around in the shallow water, we weren’t allowed in the water because one of the dolphins had a week old calf and it could be easily frightened away from it’s mother and she wouldn’t be able to protect it from tiger sharks. Once it did get out into deeper water without its mother and you should have seen the speed of its mother when she found it missing, she flew out into the deeper water and it wasn’t long before she had it back in the shallows.

Baby dolphins are fairly clumsy at first and they have to keep swimming all the time, for the first month the mother dolphin does not get any sleep at all, she has to follow the little fellow the whole time (how would you like to be a dolphin you girls?). We took heaps of photos, they only give the dolphins a quarter of their daily needs of fish so they have to get the rest of their meals in the wild, they feed them about 2kg and only feed the females as the males are to rough. When they have finished feeding the handler turn the bucket upside down to wash it and the Dolphins swim away knowing thats all for now. It’s not long before there back for the second and third helping.

After the feeding Markus and I went fishing up along the beach, the girls sunbaked and read on the beach. We caught a tailor and two whiting, the whiting were undersize. We had lunch on the lawn at the resort, such a beautiful view.





SHOTOVER SAILING

We boarded the “Shotover” at 12.45pm for our sail, after the normal safety instructions we headed out into the bay. Shark bay is a world heritage area and has a large population of Dugongs. Once we were out on the sea grass beds we saw a lot of Dugong coming up for a breath. On the sail we also saw dolphins, long toms and turtles. The weather was fine with a slight breeze on our first sail and the wind had picked up a bit on our second one. On the second sail we only saw one dolphin, mainly because it was hard to see because of the wind. Once we got home Diane and I went down to the beach to photograph the sunset, there was some cloud around and that made it a good sunset. It was a great day.

SUNSET DENHAM
Thursday morning we left Denham at 10.00am after finding all the wiring for the brakes on the caravan were unplugged or broken, I was able to fix three of them but I will have to take the wheel off the other as the wiring has broken off inside the wheel.

On the way we first visited shell beach, it is a bay near the southern end of Shark Bay that is all shells. The shells are from the cyanobacteria cockle shell and they are between 5 and 10 metres deep. They actually mine the shells for shell grit for the chicken industry it make the egg shells stronger, they also make shell bricks out of them for housing repairs to the older buildings that were made of them in the earlier years.

We then stopped at Hamelin Pool to look at the Stomatolites, Stomatolites are a single bacteria and they attach to each other to form pillars and they are scattered all over the bottom end of Hamelin Pool. Hamelin Pool is at the end of Shark Bay and is a shallow area that has a lot of evaporation and that makes the water very salty, so salty that the sea snails that usually eat the Bacteria can’t live in it and that allows the Stomatolites to grow. They produce Oxygen so they are good for our atmosphere, it was interesting to see but the flies were bad as it is drizzling off and on today.







HAMELIN POOL

It was about 390km in total that we had covered today, arriving at Kalbarri at about 4.00pm. We set up camp at the Anchorage Caravan Park that is situated across the road from the Murchison River and near the entrance to the ocean. I quickly decided that we would be using the boat here and unloaded it straight away. They had a barbecue at the camp kitchen tonight so we went over for dinner and a chat to other campers.

Friday morning or mid morning we went fishing Mona, Anna, Markus and I, Diane stayed at the camp so that the kids could go fishing. Mona excelled with two Bream one 32cm and the other 27 cm. The rest of us caught undersized fish, Anna caught two whiting Markus small bream and I nil.

We had lunch when we returned from fishing. Diane and I went for a drive in the afternoon out to Red Bluff and around the town. There are a couple of new roads under development just behind Red Bluff, they have great views. Red Bluff is very picturesque as our photos will show. Alex and Paul came over with a few beers in the late afternoon and Alex wanted me to show him the knots that I use when I tie Braid fishing line to mono line.
RED BLUFF

I took the kids fishing again on Saturday morning at 7.00am; we fished closer to the entrance rather than up the river. Mona caught a Jewie right out in front of the boat ramp but it was only about 35cm long and the legal size is 50cm. We caught a lot of fish and a crab but they were all undersize. The kids enjoyed themselves and that’s the main thing. During the day we played rummikub and then Markus taught us to play Texas Hold’em poker.

Alex and Paul had called in the late afternoon, they had been out on a Charter fishing trip all day and had a great time, catching some nice fish. They had said that they had been up and voted and that reminded us that we hadn’t voted. As it was getting late we jumped in the car and went up to the poling booth to vote, lucky they had mentioned it otherwise we would have forgotten to vote.

At 5.45pm I took the kids fishing again up river where we caught the Bream the other day. I caught two keepers straight away, when I went to rebait my line after the first one I found that the top 5inches of my Bream rod was broken. We ended up with 5 bream that where keepers. We also caught on our lines 5 blue swimmer crabs all undersize and a lot of other small fish. We arrived home after dark; it was a good couple of hours fishing. We all went to bed about 10.30pm.

FISHING TRIP

On Sunday morning we drove out to have a look at the two gorges, they are Natures Window and the Z Bend. Natures Window is a Hole in a rock that looks like a window with the river views behind and below it. The Z Bend is the shape of the river as it winds its way to the sea. Both have lovely views of the Murchison River gorges, there is only pools of water at this time of the year.




KALBARRI GORGES

In the afternoon Diane and I had a sleep, I had some pains in the back and around the ribs. Something had bitten me on my neck and hopefully that is what was causing the pains. After our sleep Alex and Paul came over and we adjusted the steering knuckles and wheel bearings on Markus’ car. Paul is a mechanic and he also checked the wheel tow in. It was 2mm out and he said that is fine because they should have that amount of tow in. I was very happy with being able to get it right when we weren’t sure how close we had the tow in when I put the new steering knuckles on.

Tomorrow we will say goodbye to Markus, Anna and Mona as they have to push on to Perth as Anna fly’s home on the 3/12/2007, which is only a week away and they want to see a few more places on the way.

Well the kids packed up this morning and left about 9.30am, we were sad to see them go but we need our own time as well. We may see Markus and Mona in Perth when we get there as they are going to work in Perth to build up their cash reserves. My pains are still in my back and chest so I have been to the doctors today and he said that I have Shingles. I am on a course of tablets for the next seven days so hopefully that will stop the rash and pain. We did not do much today after the kids left, we had a lazy day. The weather is nice at the moment with a nice sea breeze in the afternoon to keep the temperature nice.

Alex and Paul came over at 6.30pm and we decided to go fishing and crabbing. We tried to catch some squid on squid jigs but there weren’t any around, we caught 3 undersize crabs and only undersize fish. We packed up at 12.00am disappointed with the night’s effort.

Tuesday morning we put the boat in the water and went fishing up river, we put in seven crab traps between our 3 and Alex’s 4. No legal size crabs were caught. We fished in between checking the traps and I caught a nice bream and Alex and Paul caught a bream and a cod.

In the afternoon we arranged to go on a charter on a boat called “Reef Walker”, we had to ring in the afternoon to confirm the time of departure. We rang at 5.00pm and the owner said that he would ring us at 6.00pm, we rang him back at 6.15pm and he said he would ring us by seven to confirm. At 7.00pm he rang back to say that he had booked other people on the boat and that he couldn’t take us tomorrow and that we could get a refund. We then rang “Kalbarri Explorer” and they booked us in for tomorrow and it was $3.50 per head cheaper. We cooked our fish for dinner and went to bed early as we had to get up at 4.30am tomorrow.

Wednesday morning the alarm went off at 4.25am so that we could get ready to leave at 5.00am. It was still dark when we arrived at the boat and it was just starting to break dawn when we went through the heads. We went up along the coast about 20km and we would have been about 6km off shore, we moved 3 times during the morning and in total caught 47 fish. Diane caught a very nice Painted Sweet Lips and I caught 3 Red Throat Emperor, all good eating fish. Paul caught 7 fish his best was a Red Emperor and a Coral Trout. Alex caught 2 Painted Sweet Lips a bit bigger than Diane’s. As it worked out we were pleased that we didn’t get on the first boat as it was smaller than the “Kalbarri Explorer” and the sea was a bit Grumpy on the day because the wind came up early. The “Kalbarri Explorer” is a 40’ Shark Cat purpose built for fishing and able to handle rough weather.
KALBARRI EXPLORER CHARTER

It is now Thursday morning and I had a restless night as my Shingles kept waking me up with nerves acting up. As we are leaving tomorrow I packed up the boat today and after lunch we went for a drive south along the coast. We stopped at the Natural Bridge, Castle Cove, Island Rock, Grandstand, Shell house, Eagle Gorge and Pot Alley. The coastline is very rugged as the photos will show but also very beautiful. We fuelled up on the way home and then we both had a sleep. I only slept for half an hour but I felt better after the sleep.

KALBARRI VIEWS

They have a Barbeque in the camp kitchen on Thursday nights so we went up and had a chat to other traveller’s; it was a good chance to get to find out where other people have been travelling.

Thursday night was another bad night for me with a stabbing like pain in my right ear and right thigh every couple of minutes, all caused from shingles? We left Kalbarri and on our way to Geraldton we visited Port Gregory and Horrocks. Port Gregory and Horrocks are small fishing villages both on the coast with pretty settings; they are like Seal Rocks in NSW. It won’t be long before they are developed. We also took some photos of the Pink Lake just outside of Port Gregory.

PINK LAKE