Onslow to Exmouth




 Our lunch break on the Exmouth Gulf was pretty amazing. Would make a great free camp spot, ~15kms south of Exmouth.

The big prawn at Exmouth, WA.

Well, we had 3 nights in Exmouth at the Big4/RAC caravan park. We spent a day and a half in the Cape Range National Park and Ningaloo Reef World Heritage Area snorkelling, taking photos and sight seeing. It is fantastic. It is about a 30 minutes drive from Exmouth around the tip of the cape around to the National Park Entrance. Along the way you can see the military antenna installation, Vlaming Head Lighthouse and lookout with the old WWII radar installation and the wreckage of the SS Mildura which hit the reef at the north end of the cape in 1907, 3 years later the lighthouse was built. 
We hired snorkelling equipment from the Exmouth Visitors Centre, it was $10 per day per person which was pretty good value I think, and saves us buying cheap stuff and then having to find room to carry it with us. 

A panorama shot off the smartphone of one of the bays at Cape Range National Park.

This is where we did all of our snorkelling. It is called the "Turquoise Bay Drift" the waves crash over the outer reef and into this lagoon, then has to get back out to sea and it flows parallel to this beach before flowing through a gap in the outer reef and back out to sea. You just walk up the beach a few hundred meters, swim out over the reef and let the current carry you back along the beach. You just have to get out before the end of the sandbar or you might get dragged out to sea. It seemed to us to be more relaxing and easier on or nearer to the low tides. This reduced the amount of current and made the drift last longer as well as made the swim back to shore much easier. We attempted it on our second day at high tide and the current was quite strong. We were also very lucky to have this to ourselves for the most part. 

Us after we were all snorkelled out on day 1 at the Cape Range National Park. 

 Turquoise bay. 

The view from the top of Vlaming Head.

The Vlaming Head lighthouse. 

The Exmouth Marina. We tried to have a bit of a fish here one evening. It was far too windy to fish anywhere else. We had heard that there had been a lot of Whiting caught on the beaches but the wind was unfishable. The marina offered just enough protection from the swirling gale to allow us to wet a line. We caught lot of small fish, nothing big enough to keep though. The goal was to try and catch Mangrove Jack, we did this but the best we could manage was about 20cm. 

Our last night at Exmouth was a bit of a long one. The wind howled all night at near gale force. It blew the tent around and rocked the trailer all night long. I was just waiting to hear the crash of a big gum tree branch land on the roof of the 'cruiser. We were all unscathed in the morning, albeit a lot short on sleep. 

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