It kept on raining through the night, but the day dawned clearer and we even had some blue skies. The ground was less soggy- which was a good thing.
We paid the caretaker and headed out towards Coral Bay on the track which was sometimes rocky, wet, rutted and sandy. Eventually we hit the bitumen road heading into town and drove in to a town looking very much the same as we remembered from 8 years ago when we visited here briefly.
We took a photo of us in front of the beautiful bay as we did those years ago and took a walk along the beautiful beach and up to the lookout. The wind was continuing to blow pretty savagely but the water still looked clear and delightfully blue.
We headed up to the lookout at the top of the Sandhills and surveyed the windswept bay.
We chatted to Al and Zita and watched them brave the waters, deciding that we wouldn’t.
We checked out the “resort” where we stayed for a night last time (it looks just the same) and drove around to the boat ramp. Numerous boats were moored here, tossing in the wind. We were delighted to see that one of them was “Shore Thing”- the catamaran we stayed on last time we were here (to celebrate my 50th birthday)
We had fond memories of killing some time on a quad bike tour through the Sandhills and tracks out here and stopping to look from the cliffs to see turtles far below. We walked from the boat ramp to Snapper Point to look down from the cliffs, but there was too much swell today to make out any turtles if they were there.
Once we had been well aired we hopped back in the camper, stopped in Coral Bay again and shared a serve of fish and chips 🍟 looking out over the bay before we took to the bitumen and made a beeline for Carnarvon.
The drive south was long and boring. We were travelling against 40km/hr winds, which was terrible for the fuel economy. Somewhere along there we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn.
There were keep left signs very regularly at every pull off. The text was in 4 foreign languages. Spanish, German, and some Asian language. Obviously there are issues up here with people forgetting.
As we neared Carnarvon we started to see the fruit and vegetable plantations which make up the “ fruit loop”. Notable were the banana plantations. There are a number of farm shops along the roads north and south of the river to buy produce.
Since we still had some daylight we headed for the mouth of the Gascoyne river and checked out the river tracks and the statue remembering the Lock Islands
(Islands where aboriginals were incarcerated). This is also the site of a failed grand meatworks project (built and opened but never used). The buildings were used for a number of purposes before becoming derelict and a shelter for the homeless. They are now completely gone. Old wooden railway trucks litter the area.
You can also see the old 1 mile long wooden jetty from here.
We took a brief tour through the centre of town too, and took in a bit of dirt track further back along the river ( by Chinamans pool) which is a good birding spot before heading for the caravan park.
The Outback Oasis Caravan Park has unlimited internet access (but you can’t actually get logged in to it) and also table tennis and pool tables and a camp kitchen. We cooked our tea in their camp kitchen, washing up in the huge square sink before heading back to the camper to complete the census on Trevor’s phone. ( Ben had sent through our census number from home)
Once that task was complete we treated ourselves to a couple of games of table tennis before bed.
Luvapuzzle 