We got up early and headed for a 7 am snorkel at Turquoise Bay. When we arrived, we were the only ones there. Low tide was at 6am. We decided to give the drift area a try. The current is strong and pulls you along, but you must be careful and get out before you a taken out through the reef opening. We knew that the best time was on the low tide or full tide (which doesn’t get you as close to the coral). We managed a couple of sweep bys, but on the third the current was getting much stronger, so we gave it a miss - don’t want to embarrass ourselves by having to get rescued :) It was around 9.30am when we left the water. We were lucky because the wind started to get very strong as well and nobody else got a chance to try the drift area this morning. We didn’t venture too far out past the 100 metres recommended. The variety and colour of the fish was fantastic. The coral wasn’t that outstanding, probably because we have snorkelled the barrier reef and have been spoilt or it may have been the section we were in.
We thoroughly enjoyed it. Today now is a wash out for snorkelling and the report is that it will be worse tomorrow and start to get better on Monday and Tuesday should be a great day. We plan to go back to Exmouth on Monday and down to Charles Knife Gorge for a walk, so this should work out well for us.
We saw this Wedge Tailed Eagle on the way to Turquoise Bay. Of course, he wasn’t going to hang around for me to take a decent photo.
This was Turquoise Bay on our arrival. It was a choppy mess within two hours.
The information bay identifies most of the fish you will encounter. View from car park.
We saw a lovely green turtle and had a swim in him.
Only kidding, this is a pic of a postcard. I did see Nemo though.
After we had finished our swim, lots of people arrived and started asking us questions – like we were the experts :) We were as clueless as they were, but had got there early. We met quite a few travellers and had a nice chat.
We then headed down to Oyster Stack which is another nice snorkel site to check it out.
The steps to the rocky foreshore of Oyster Stacks. I think we will give this area a tryout on Tuesday.
We then headed down to Yardie Creek and Yardie Creek Gorge. Wow !
As soon as I saw that view, I knew that I was going to paddle the kayak up that gorge.
The view back from the creek edge walk.
The walk to the Gorge path. As usual nearly everyone was wearing thongs. The track is rough, the limestone is very sharp. Met one guy trying to walk back barefoot. Some very cut and sore feet coming his way.
A panorama looking west.
Glen is down in the gully, there were about three of these to cross.
The water in the gorge is contained and backs up like a lake because of the sand bar at the front. The sand bar is opened when they have high rainfall like last April which caused flooding.
Yardie Creek is the only creek in the national park with water in it. We will be able to kayak up to the left of the panorama before running out of water. The creek is long and straight near the sandbar and then a “S” shape.
We called into a couple of beaches on the way to the visitor information centre.
The wind was gusting, so it was back to camp for a very late lunch around 2.30pm.
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