Today didn’t exactly go as planned but it turned out in a good way in the end !
We started with a breakfast at the Minilya Roadhouse along with topping off the fuel tanks. We then set off to Coral Bay with the intention of having a look around before continuing to our planned camp site.
Coral Bay is not at all as we’d expected, we’d assumed it would be the “normal” beachside town but it seems they’ve not finished it yet… We were quite disappointed when we arrived and we both thought “is that it ?”. Still, as we were there we had a quick stroll onto the beach for a look and the sea did look very inviting. After deciding we’d go for a swim we decided it’d be worthwhile getting a snorkel set each and to practice with it prior to our booked trip on Saturday.
After a steady start we both built our confidence and were eventually confident enough in our kit to swim out over the coral beds that are actually only about 20 feet out from where the beach shelves into deeper water. In the end we spent nearly 2 hours swimming around and watching the multitude of fish that make the coral their home, many of them within a few feet of the beach. All in all a very enjoyable experience after a singularly uninspiring start. We’re both looking forward now to tomorrow’s excursion out over the main reef.

From Coral Bay we headed to our chosen camp site but as it was still early and too hot to sit around for the afternoon we decided to carry on to Exmouth and see if we could find a site there. The Big4 site had space for us and it’s only about 100 metres from the pickup point for tomorrow’s tour so we’ve booked in.
Tomorrow we should finish the tour at around mid day after I which we’ll restock our food and beer before heading into the national park on the way to the camp site which is only about 100k south of Exmouth.
No pictures today as we don’t have a waterproof camera so I’ve added a couple I took at the Exmouth camp site of some of the local birdlife.