The Beach at Coral Bay.
You know when you have left a place as magical as Monkey Mia. One would think that it would be very difficult to find a place that would top it. Just a few 100 km's up the road we have found that spot. Coral Bay!
Spangled Emperors
What a wonderful location, the caravan park is right opposite the beach, and the beach, well words cannot really describe it. You can walk straight out from the beach and there in the water you have Spangled Emperor swimming around your legs, sandy coloured sting rays, with these longs tails, gliding next to you. A little deeper with your mask and snorkel, you find yourself swimming over coral and amazing marine life. There are sea cucumbers, coral bombs, parrot fish, butterfly fish and many more varieties. The colours are amazing. For children and novice snorkels, what a place to learn. Comparing Coral Bay to Hardy's reef on the The Great Barrier Reef, I would say that this is by far the better place.
Coral and clam shell, taken at the outer reef.
Anyway we caught an eco tour yesterday. It was five hours on the inner and outer reefs. At the jetty we saw a scorpion fish and a Queensland Groper, wow he was huge. Our first spot was to a shark cleaning station. This is a spot were reef sharks go to get cleaned by smaller fish. We were split into two groups as we had to swim to a gap in the coral, swim through it and then snorkel around this huge coral bomb, about ten feet below. As the currants were quite strong Hope would not have been able to go. I went in the first group, as we were swimming towards the gap, bluebottles (jellyfish) stung a few of the group so they turned back. Anyway perseverance pushed a few of us on. When I swam through the gap, I got stung on my ankle and back. Never mind, not the first time and I am sure it won't be the last. It was so worth it. There were about 13 reef sharks swimming below us. What an awesome sight.
Reef sharks swimming next to the coral bomb at the shark cleaning station.
When we got back to the boat everyone had been stung, including John and Hope who had been snorkeling by the boat. The spotter plane was up. We were on board and off we went looking for Manta Rays, the idea was to go swimming with these magnificent creatures. The Manta Rays on the other hand had a different idea, and were no where to be found. Boo Hoo!!!
However we did spot dugong, dolphins, turtles, cow tail sting rays, a "stripey" which is a tiger shark and "bait balls" been attacked by trevally (fish) and birds. Bait balls are thousands of little fish swimming as one. Later on in the day, when we got back to the beach, there was a bait ball in the bay. It was amazing swimming next to it and seeing how these fish move as one. On occasion they split into two and swam around or under us. But always regrouped. It was pretty silly really swimming next to it, as we could have been mistaken for food as well.
We also had a snorkel on the outer reef, where we spotted octopus, puffer fish, yellow dotted moari wasse, mourish idol, huge clams and well we could go on but to be honest we do not know all the names of all the marine life that we saw. It was a great day out.
The octopus on the outer reef.
Today however we spent it on the beach. We found a lovely spot under a tree in the shade, and not far from the water. It was great fun, snorkeling, swimming, playing on the waters edge and chatting to a lovely family from Adelaide who was camping next to us at "Peoples Park "
Looking out from our spot under the tree
This is one place we will be sorry to leave, and I am sure that we will be coming back. The people are great, the facilities are great but what the ocean can offer is out of this world.
Hope's Blog.......... It was great fun on the boat, because the Skipper let me steer the boat lots of time. I was a bit scared in the water because of all the big fish, but it was very exciting, and the colours of the fish were beautiful. I didn't like getting stung by the bluebottles, that was sore.
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