Day 56 – Fri, 3 Sep to Coral Bay

What a fantastic night sleep I had. After I wrote last night’s post I cooked dinner – steaks, onions, tomatoes & eggs on toast, well I had vegetables with my steak the night before. I then had a cold ale whilst I did some reading in the pub, watched a little TV and then hit the sack.

A not so early rise, well 7am is not so early lately, packed up and hit the road. It would only be a short ride today, 155km S to Coral Bay. I headed out of Exmouth and travelled at around 90kph as there was a strong, gusting wind from the E. Later this would keep blowing over the front left quarter even though I headed SW and then W. So the wind must have kept changing every time I changed my direction.

Along the way 3 emus crossed my path, so I slowed to around 50km giving them a wide berth. As I was almost upon them one of them took exception to me and turned and walked with head held high right towards me. I gave the bike a little squirt to get past him and in my mirrors I could see that he stood in the middle of the road looking at me as I rode away; talk about attitude.

I arrived in Coral Bay, basically a holiday location, around 10:30 and checked into the campground that I had pre-booked from Exmouth. I am camped on sand, a little different to my last camp night on the red dirt of the Pilbara. I am now in the Gascoyne region of WA. The temperatures for the past few days have only hovered around 26C so it is getting cooler as I progress S.

I took a run around to the boat launching ramp and found this fabulous environment of white sand, turquoise water and the reef – sound familiar. Well it should as Coral Bay gives access to the Ningaloo Reef right at the door step.

After lunch I took a walk down to the beach (about 150m) and decided to book onto a Quad Bike Sunset Tour. What a fantastic time we had; there were 8 bikes plus the right leader, and we headed S into the sand hills for 2 hours of quad biking. First time I have done this and as riders know, riding a four wheel bike is more like driving a car then riding a motorbike. Yeah, that’s me climbing the dune.

We travelled on sand roads, well almost paths, with cross slopes – some approaching 30-40 degrees - up & down steep dunes and then watched the sun set into the Indian Ocean. There were about 5 kids on the trip all riding as pillions – I know they had fun because of the smiles – well I certainly had one as well – just a big kid at heart. We travelled back at dusk under lights. What a fabulous way to end the day, bring on tomorrow.

Oh, the photos were taken by the broken camera, their is no view finder and the screen is what has broken. I can only see an image about 5mm wide at the top right, down to 1mm wide at the bottom right. Maybe I should take photos like this all the time as I was quite surprised. Also one of the other riders took photos of me – they thought it was a challenge as well – just point in the general direction and shoot. Take enough and a few will hopefully turn out okay.