CORAL COAST, WA

WA's Coral Coast seems to extend from Perth, or at least Cervantes, to Exmouth, a distance in excess of one thousand kilometres.

CORAL BAY

South of Exmouth is the small tourist village of Coral Bay, consisting of a couple of caravan parks, a resort and a few shops, strung along a road running parallel to the beach.  Its main attraction is the closeness of Ningaloo Reef to the shore.  Cross the road and you are on the beach.  A short distance from the shore is the reef, different from the Great Barrier Reef, but still amazing.



Coral Bay

 Photos of the reef through a glass bottomed boat:

CARNARVON

Claimed to be where the central desert meets the sea, Carnarvon was a place to stock up with supplies and get some chores done. Carnarvon is situated on the Gascoyne River which appears to be dry but the water is located under the sandy river bed.

Waiting for me at the Post Office was a box of books from Readings - very exciting as there hadn't been a book shop since Broome.

'One Mile Jetty', Carnarvon (now less than one mile)

OTC dish

The Overseas Telecommunicatios Dish, now decommissioned, played a role in the US's space program including the Apollo landing on the moon.

A drive north to Quobba Point to see the blowholes produced the added bonus of a pod of whales frolicking and breaching offshore.  Wild flowers lined the road.



Salt lake on way to Quobba Point

View of plain from lighthouse

Quobba blowhole

CARNARVON TO SHARK BAY

Where the desert meets the sea

 Lookout off highway south of Carnarvn

HAMELIN POOL

The further south we travelled, the greater the profusion of wildflowers.  Carpets of daisies, sometimes yellow, sometimes white or pink lined the road and into the surrounding area as far as I could see.  My head was on a swivel as we barrelled down the highway, but as Eric was towing the van, we didn't stop for photos. 

After turning west off the highway towards Shark Bay, we overnighted at Hamelin Pool to see the stromatolites.   These look like lumps of rock but are actually an ancient form of life created by colonies of cyanobacteria (a single-celled microbe).  They are credited with having a major role in the production of oxygen and hence the creation of Earth's atmosphere.  The world's other significant site of living stromatolites is in the Bahamas.



Stromatolites - living rock

Carpet of stromatolite

Hamelin Pool also features an old coquina quarry.  Coquina is cockle shells bound togethere with calcium carbonate.  In the early days coquina was used as a building material.

North of Hamelin Pool is Shell Beach

DENHAM

A pretty, small coastal town devoted entirely to tourism, but windy.  Evidently 'blows' are frequent on this coast.  We had two nights of battering when 'strong winds' were forecast.  We were glad they weren't talking about gale force, but you could have fooled us.




View from our camp site



Denham is the closest access point to Cape Peron in Francois Peron National Park, a one and a half hour four wheel drive along a narrow, sandy, somewhat corrugated track.  But what a fantastic place - absolutely gorgeous - and flowers everywhere.  From a lookout we saw two turtles, a shark and a manta ray.



The road



The cape

MONKEY MIA

From Denham we crossed the peninsula to Monkey Mia on the eastern side (much more sheltered from the wind) so that we could watch the dolphins being fed at 8 o'clock in the morning.