Exmouth – Cape Range National Park

From Karijini to Exmouth is over 700 kms, so we stopped at a free road-side stop called House Creek Bridge. It was really quite quaint and we were joined by 2 other lots of campers.

Then it was off to Exmouth. On the way into Exmouth Jayne was driving and a truck went past up, kicked up the smallest of rocks and cracked our windscreen. We were both shocked that such a small rock cracked the screen as we were both going fairly slow. It must have been the heat and the location of impact that did it.

We will get this replaced in Karratha as they have a Novus windscreen repairer there and they have ordered a VW screen for us when we get there in 1.5 weeks. This will now be the 4^th new windscreen in the Touareg! I actually think they are strong screens, we’ve just have bad luck with them.

We finally have joined up with the heat of the tropics with night-time temperatures staying above 20ºC, very comfortable. The Big 4 caravan park there says it has 15 amp power, but every time we turned on our air-con it tripped their safety switch. The maintenance guy in the park tried to blame our van, but in the afternoons when the temperature was around 35ºC plus, no vans had their air-cons on, so this was very suspicious. At $57/night without full power this is a bit of a rip-off.

Exmouth is a booming town, a new marina is being built, and we cycled all around it one morning before it got too hot.

We managed to find out you can book camping spots at Cape Range National Park, they keep this a very good secret as most books say you can't book. So we booked a spot for 4 nights and when we got here we extended it for another 3 nights, total 7 nights.

On our first day here we went snorkelling at Turquoise Bay doing the drift snorkel (this is where you swim out from the beach about 10 meters, and just lay there and allow the current to sweep you across the top of the coral, very easy), and yesterday we did the Oyster Stacks snorkel, which Jayne thought was better than Turquoise Bay.

The coral here is very good, not as good as the Great Barrier Reef, but not bad.

We’ve sent up our boat and have spent a day riding our bikes as it was cool this morning, we had rain overnight, and when it cleared up at noon, so we hit the water in the boat, went exploring along Ningaloo Reef (on the inside of the reef) and later went fishing in a designated fishing area. We caught lots of coral fish but nothing that was big enough to keep. Many pretty colours.

We saw lots of turtles and sting rays from our boat and on our way back we even saw a reef shark swimming in about 1.5 metres of water under our boat, our day was complete.

Our boat is moored at the beach which is just a sand dune away from us, so we can easily use it weather permitting.

We went fishing the next day, heading off at around 10am, right on high tide. Take about catch fish! We hardly got our lines in the water and got bites. We were right out near the reef, about 20m in from the breakers and anchored over a hole in the coral. We ended up not using any sinkers or floats, just hooks with prawn on them. As long as we didn’t let the fish dive we were able to land them, if they dove they would wrap our lines around the coral or reef and they would break very easily. The next time we got out we’ll have tracers on the lines to stop these actions from the fish.

Some of them were above the legal size limit, but we let them go following Jayne's catch and release policy.

A Bit on Camp Hosts and French Backpackers

Patrick and Barbara at Cape Range National Park certainly had an easier job of camp hosting than poor Richard and Dianne at Karijini National Park.  Many of the young European travellers are quite a problem as they arrive into the camp after dark and leave early the next morning, so they don’t have to pay the $7.50 a night camping fee. Richard would cycle around each camp loop trying to catch up with the non-payers before they took off.   We were in Site 100, and he reckons he was cycling 15 kms a day to keep up with his job.

In Cape Range NP we stayed at Tulki Beach camp area – one of about 8 various camp spots within Cape Range National Park.  There were only 11 sites, with the camp hosts a very friendly Zimbabwean couple with the broadest Aussie accents around.  When they’re not hosting they spend a few months gold prospecting, which seems to be a very popular activity over here.  I think the heat and flies would be enough to keep us from such an activity. 

Each day at sunset Patrick would invite anyone new in his "camping loop" to drinks at 5.30 pm, so we’d all gather around the central table talking, drinking and laughing together as the sun set over the sand dune in front of us.  The table was always full of Germans in Britz vans, assorted Aussies, young people and old ones.  Strangely though no French backpackers as they seem to spend their nights hiding in side streets for the night and reappear the next morning at the tourist sites.

We’ve heard some amazing stories about the French backers who are not popular here at all.  One story we’ve heard a few times was of them forming groups where they go into supermarkets and stealing food while others keep a lookout via their phones.  They even stole equipment from a hardware store to donate to a rescue crew who saved one of them when he fell over a cliff in Karajini NP.  There are signs outside shops written in French, warning of persecution and fines for stealing.  Apparently there are websites in French where you can go to and learn how to camp here for free, the best shops to steal from etc. 

There were 11 campsites in our "loop" at Cape Range, so this was a nice small gathering each night. Some of the campers didn't join in, which is fine, but when you consider they were invariably ones from overseas (German), you wonder what they expect from their Australian experience? This was a really nice touch as you get to meet all sorts of different travellers, some in tents, campers, caravans and some that have flown into Exmouth just to do the Whale Shark swim. At $800 return for the flight from Perth & then $380 for the Whale Shark trip, this is quite expensive.

Jayne did our 3 loads of washing in Exmouth yesterday there were 8 guys/girls who’d taken over the whole Laundromat and were sprawled over the stairs so nobody could get past.  There was signs on the walls in French, warning that they were being filmed by CCTV and if they were caught trying to fix the machines for a free wash they would be persecuted by the police.  Thanks to Google Translate for that one!

I mentioned before the visits we’ve had from the wind, here’s a shot showing just how bad they are around these parts. When that wind comes off Antarctica there's just no stopping it if you’re on the coast. When we arrived in Cape Range National Park it was like being in a wind tunnel. Lucky for us it died down that night and it’s been acceptable since. Some days we have no wind here.

We now move to Ningaloo Station www.ningaloostation.com.au for a few nights. The road in is supposed to be absolutely terrible, but we’ll see if we can make it by taking it slow. We’ve heard very good reports about this place and just how beautiful it is etc. So we’re going to have a look, and at $20/person for 7 days it’s not expensive.