Snorkelling at Coral Bay

The remains of the jetty where MV Krait and Z Special Forces
departed on their mission to Singapore

Leaving Exmouth, we stopped to visit the cairn marking the departure point of Operation Jaywick, where MV Krait and the Z Special Force left for Singapore in 1943. There was not much left of the jetty but we enjoyed seeing where the Zed's slathered on their Helena Rubinstein makeup (Mid-brown, I believe!), popped on their sarongs and left to wreak havoc on the Japanese fleet in their small fishing boat!

Back out onto the "red road". I just don't know what those early settlers were thinking, taking a direct route through the vast plains and not following the coast! Coral Bay wasn't far and we were soon catching another glimpse of the Indian Ocean.

First glimpse of Coral Bay - WA School holidays!

The campground was full. It was packed. There were KIDS everywhere. Quite a shock to our systems as we have been enjoying our first ever holidays not aligned to school holidays! Grey nomads don't make nearly as much noise as families! It was really tight getting into our site - guys came running at the sound of our reversing beeper. At first I thought they were being friendly, but then I realised they wanted to make sure we didn't reverse into their fancy boats! Dave worked his usual reversing magic into the site and we set up quickly. The kids all know their set-up jobs now and if everyone is on the ball it doesn't take long.

We did a much-needed cleanup to get Ned's Camp out of the Blunderbuss and caravan before a walk along the windy beach.

The kids had a great time in the camp playground the next morning, along with all the other inmates. Dave took the kids snorkelling for a couple of hours as I had succumbed to a virus and was feeling horrible. They loved the snorkelling and said the coral was like a vegetable garden, but came back very cold due to the howling gale. Someone told us that WA stands for Windy Always and so far we would have to agree!

Porker-faced pair!

Things soon warmed up with a few games of Texas Hold'em Poker ... even Ella is in on the act now and is working on her "porker face"! Sometimes she forgets the names of the cards, but we all know what she means when she has "a pair of As".

Lachie woke us the next morning to tell us he was off to the playground. It was very early! After playground time, we wrote some postcards and got our gear ready to go snorkelling again. I wasn't feeling great, but didn't want to miss out on our last chance to snorkel at Coral Bay. The wind was a little less ferocious, thankfully, and we enjoyed a couple of hours at the bay. The fish were prolific and the coral was different again from Ningaloo. One patch was exactly like cabbages - I could see why the kids called it a veggie garden! More card games and poker rounded off the day.

Goodbye to Coral Bay

Lachlan was again up very early to get to the playground. He was begging us to stay another day to play some more there! However, there was still a lot more of WA to experience, so we packed up and after having morning tea overlooking the bay, left to travel to Carnarvon.
Stay tuned ...