Camped up Ningaloo

Camped up Ningaloo June – July 2010

Three weeks have passed since arriving at South Lefroy Bay, Ningaloo. The weather has been a mixed bag of beautiful sunny day’s to overcast rainy & windy weather, but that is the West Australian Coast and we don’t let it bother us much, we always find something to do even if it’s just refilling the water tanks or taking a drive along the Coastal Track to Coral Bay like we did last Friday.

It’s a full day drive even though it’s only around 70klm to Coral Bay, by the time we drive down every side track and walk up and down the deserted beaches finding many treasures such as washed up numerous fishing lures, a boogy board and Vickie found a fishing knife still in it’s sheaf. The track is rough & corrugated in places but nothing any 4wd couldn’t handle easily. Of course a day to Coral Bay is not complete without having lunch at the Bakery, some of the best pie’s and cake’s can be found here.


Around 4pm we decided to head on back to camp, Dave accidently locked his keys in his Landcruiser. It took us an hour to finally get the rear door’s open using wire and relayed information as to where to place the wire as the ‘wire holder’ Dave couldn’t see what he was doing.

We managed to get out on the water with the Kayak’s on Saturday, it was a lovely day with crystal clear water but not many fish about. Vickie caught some large Chinaman Cod or Charlie Courts as they are more known as here, I caught some small Redthroat and Dave had fun with some Long Tom’s.

Other than that it’s our son’s Birthday today the 27th , Best Wishes to you Dan we would love to be able to give you a hug but a phone call will have to do.
Another week has passed and we have settled into the routine of fishing from the beach, fishing from the Kayak’s, collecting water, emptying the loo, eating & happy hour’s. We had one fantastic day where Dave & I were fishing off the beach and doing well with a mixture of Trevally & Spangled Emperor, and Vickie out in her Kayak having a ball catching 4 large Golden Trevally, it was great to see her finally catch some fish that gave her a tussle, she did extremely well fighting them and getting them into the Yak, she has some bruises to prove how hard they fought.
We all drove into Exmouth to attend a World Heritage meeting at the Rec Centre, apparently the Ningaloo Coastline and the Cape Range has been put up for World Heritage listing by the Federal & State Govt, this has been done with minimal consultation with the local Shire, Pastoral lease owners & the general public and there has been an angry backlash, the meeting we went to was attended by over 100 people with another meeting that evening having 400 + people going along. Plenty of questions were asked and no definate answers were given, from what i could understand is, ‘If the area meets the criteria of the World Heritage Council’ then it’s just a rubber stamp and hand balled over to DEC [CALM] to manage, if that happens we can all say goodbye to the Coast as we know it.

Saturday the 3rd, The Billy’s were leaving for home after camping here for two Months and we had to break camp and move 600mts up the beach to another camp site as our camp was booked out, it was sad seeing them go as they are good company and even though they are family they are great mates and we enjoyed camping with them. Our new camp is out in the open on the beach flats, it’s ok but not as nice as where we were. We spent the day setting up camp again and dissapointed that we don’t get reliable phone or internet signal, even a drive up into the dunes where i have received signal before didn’t work so not sure when i will get to upload the latest blog.

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