Leaving Exmouth we retraced yesterday’s sightseeing trip
past the lighthouse and continued on down the western coastline through the
Cape Range National Park, an airforce defence area and pastoral stations
(although what the sheep & goats ate, I have no idea) all overlooking the
Ningaloo Reef. Ranges to the left of us, reef to the right of us. The ranges
are still quite barren and very dry, the reef, on the other hand, beautiful
turquoise and brilliant white sand. Today promised to be our first real day of
4 wheeling starting with a creek crossing at the south end of the park at
Yardie Creek. We checked at the information centre and there wasn’t going to be
a problem with the tide – “no worries, the tide doesn’t affect the creek”. Got
there, had a look and……… disappointment. The darn creek hadn’t seen any water
for months! We saw a 4x4 airing up after having crossed from the opposite side
but decided we’d try without airing down. 45lb pressure and a heavy wallowing
brick and we still made it across with ease. Not so for a guy towing a caravan,
who had even aired down, going the opposite way, chugging along only making it
¾ of the way across before burying himself - momentum is your friend. Luckily
for him someone over the other side winched him through. The track after that
was very narrow and varied from corrugated, rough to loose sand. Great stuff
and I was driving! Although we did get up to a maximum of 60kph, we generally
cruised at 45-50 as both our bodies and the trucks couldn’t stand any more.
Thankfully we don’t own the trucks. Talk about shake, rattle and roll. 150km
latter, we made it into Coral Bay, a very small, picturesque, popular (school
holidays) seaside town. We found all sorts of things on the floor and R&K
lost all the screws from one side of their step which was left hanging. Still,
not the 1st time we have had to undertake some running repairs. We
set up camp and had a bit of a look around, settling down to a hand of cards
before going down the road for pizza, wine and cheesecake and an early night.
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