Coral Bay
Trip Start
Dec 23, 2007
1
18
47
Trip End
May 30, 2008
Coral Bay,
Australia
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Coral Bay is located at Point Maud on the edge of Ningaloo Marine Park, Western Australia's biggest and most accessible coral reef. It is the underwater paradise of Western Australia. I'd booked to stay 3 nights at the Ningaloo Club and I'm pleased I did. The place was relatively new, had great facilities, including a brilliant pool adjoined to a bar and pleasant outdoor areas around the pool.
Each day I took to the beach with my snorkel, goggles and fins and swam over the famous Ningaloo Marine Park. You walk out about 30 meters of crystal clear knee deep water watching fish 2 foot long swim around your legs, before the sand drops off into a reef of coral. From here there was so much to explore. The fish were amazing. All shapes, sizes and colours. Within an area of 5 square meters, I would have seen about 20 different species
Morning on the beach at Coral Bay
. The fish were mostly brightly coloured, although the coral was not. Most coral was grey, brown and black in colour. Apparently this is normal for the water temperature in this location. I was totally fascinated with a fish no bigger than 1.5cm in length. It had yellow and black stripes, and just swam continually around my goggles! You put out your hands to the fish and could touch them if you wanted. They were so used of people that they just went about their foraging, oblivious to my presence. When diving down to the ocean floor, the fish just swam along beside me.I was overwhelmed when I found a turtle in about 4 meters of water. He was just swimming along, but turned to check me out and swam to meet me. He surfaced right in front of my goggles, gave me the eye, grabbed a breath of air, then casually swam away. It was beautifully coloured and had amazing texture to its shell and head. This was certainly a highlight.
On one occasion after following the lines of coral and finding all kinds of different species of fish I turned to look back to the beach to see exactly where I was. Quite surprisingly I was what appeared to be a mile from the shore! Not quite, but way too far out anyway. It's easy to get carried away when exploring! Too many sharks out there so I headed back toward the beach
The Ningaloo Club
.The water was warm and the sun was steaming hot. I couldn't stay on the beach for longer than 20 minutes or so, before having to return to the water to cool off.
One night I took fish and chips for tea and sat on the beach to watch the sun set. The tide was right in and the water was lapping at my feet rhythmically. The view was beautiful and the temperature was still hovering at around 30 degrees with high humidity. Just after the sun went down a hole in the sand about the size of a 50 cent piece suddenly appeared right next to me. From beneath the sand came a crab about 3 inches wide. It hesitated as it saw my movement then dashed back into the hole. It again appeared a couple of minutes later and sat there, waiting for my next move. I stayed motionless until more crabs started appearing from holes and specifically one right beneath where I was sitting started scratching on my leg! That was enough of a hint for me to move on, to allow the crabs make their way to the water for the night.
Loved my time at Coral Bay. It was casual, relaxed and was certainly an underwater paradise.
