Day 119. Exmouth

Up the creek...

This morning was another beautiful day on the Cape. We woke to a glorious morning, and got hard to work nice and early. 3 x loads of washing were hung out to dry before we headed off to the west side of the Cape into the National Park to explore more of this amazing country.

Yardie Creek

Western Black Footed Rock Wallaby

We headed straight down to Yardie Creek, where we had booked onto a gorge cruise. While waiting for the tour to begin, Scarlett spotted a Sting ray sitting next to the bank of the creek, and enjoyed watching all the schools of 'hardy heads' and 'mullet' continually leap out of the water as something much larger hunted them from the depths of the creek.

Scarlett looking for wild life with the binoculars

The tour 'up the creek' was a really enjoyable experience. We spied at least 3 x Western Black Footed Rock Wallabies hiding in the cliff faces on the southern edge of Yardie Creek, and then came face to face with a female Osprey that has made a nest on the northern cliff face of the creek.

Osprey

Scarlett has become a great little 'twitcher', or as Bec would say a 'bird nerd'. She had the binoculars out looking for birds and wildlife along the gorge, and she was the first to spot quite a number of them.

Other wildlife we saw included a family of Nankeen (Australian) Kestrels, soaring and playing at the top of the gorge; Tropical and Cattle Egret; Short Billed Corella's; and Scarlett found a number of crabs on the rocky edges.

The colours of the gorge were breathtaking, and just being able to sit back and relax while enjoying the views and listing to our guide explain what we were looking at was a great way to start our day of exploration.

2 x Short-Billed Corella's

We then headed north about 25km to a spot called Turquoise Bay, and 'the drift'. We had it on good authority that these were great snorkeling destinations and better than Coral Bay; however both Bec and I agreed that Coral Bay was a much more beautiful place to swim and enjoy the coral and fish life.

Loggerhead Turtle

But I must admit that Scarlett surprised us both today, as she went snorkeling without flippers or her Wahoo vest and spent two good sessions of at least 30 minutes each; swimming in the open ocean without any assistance. She has turned into such a strong swimmer, and she absolutely loves snorkeling. Scarlett also spotted another turtle swimming in the water, and was soon in hot pursuit once again. This little guy was very friendly and let us swim with him for ages. He even surfaced for air a number of times as we swam beside him. Again, Scarlett absolutely loved the interaction.



Australian Bustard

We climbed into the Pajero for our drive home and came across a pair of Australian Bustards walking along the side of the road; so we turned around and took a photo or two to remember the occasion. Bec wasn't sure what they were at first, and thought they were a cross between a Night Curlew and an Emu.


On the way back into town we decided to stop in and start some more grocery shopping, as tomorrow is our last day in Exmouth before 'going bush' for two weeks before we arrive in Broome. We plan on cutting across to Tom Price and Karajini National Park to check out this amazing part of Australia; before heading north to Port Hedland and then across to Broome.

I doubt we'll have very little (if any) internet access during this next two weeks, so please don't panic if you don't hear from us in a while, or if the blog hasn't been updated. We'll continue to do our daily blog in a word document, and as soon as we get coverage again, we'll do a massive upload of the missing days.

Not only will the internet be hard to access, but so will accessing food and water, so we need to do a big shop here to get us through to the next major town (Broome) - that just happens to be over 2000km's away from here at Exmouth (well that's the distance it'll be by the time we visit the places we want to see on our way there).