Day 57 – Sat, 4 Sep at Coral Bay

What can I say, bloody marvellous. This place is a holiday location, nothing more nothing less. There is basically one road that leads down to the beach. It has a few shops, a great bakery, expensive supermarkets (well not actually supermarket, more a basic essentials, but expensive) a few tourist shops, cafe and a couple of restaurants, a pub, and a couple of excellent campgrounds offering a number of accommodation options and a backpackers. Sounds like a tourist write-up, doesn’t it.

Interesting there are 3 wind turbines that provide around 30-50% of the power. But more interesting is that the water supply is from an artesian bore, hundreds of metres deep. The water arrives at a temperature of 63C so they have to cool it for use, there are no hot water systems in town. Drinking water is from a reverse osmosis plant, basically like a desalination plant but using bore water rather than sea water.

Enough of all of that lets get down to the real reason everyone is here. It is the beach, the bay and the reef. Did I say this was bloody marvellous. The beach is a simple short walk from anywhere in town – no more than a couple hundred metres at most. This gives access to a wonderful bay with white sand, shallow water for the toddlers, with the water progressively getting deeper.

I had hired snorkelling equipment for the day, so left my clothes and bag on the beach at the bay and walked a few hundred metres further around the point. Here the water fell into the deeper turquoise water and only metres beyond was the reef. Here I snorkelled twice during the day for an hour or so each time, slowly drifting and swimming over the reef returning back into the bay. Oh what a pity I didn’t have an underwater camera. In fact, oh what a pity I didn’t have a camera that I could see what I was photographing.

You are just going to have to take my word for this. It was beautiful. Coral of all shapes, types and sizes. The reef may not be as extensive as out east, but far more accessible once you are here. Coral the size of boulders some metres in diameter. Coral like opening flowers massive in size – just imagine flowers as large as 2 metres across and you now think of it as coral and you may understand what I am trying to say. Star shaped coral, ribbon, clams, just amazing.

This is a sanctuary so fish just ignore you. Small colourful ones, bright blues and purples. Larger yellow ones, larger still multicoloured ones. Some with black & white stripes – zebra fish maybe. As you can tell I don’t know my fish types but hey, that doesn’t stop you enjoying them.

I think what are called emperor fish, about 40cm long would swim beside you, and I know they are looking at you. You can see it in their eyes. Did I say bloody marvellous, oh yeah I think I have said that before.

Just a wonderful restful day, enjoying the sun, the sand, the water and of course the marine life. Bloody marvellous!!