To Broome and Back!: Day 83. Exmouth. 02/07/2015

The days of waking to sunny blue skies must be getting less as we head South, so we are making every day count enjoying the warmth and sunshine. This morning we visited the Information Centre to make a booking to go on a Coral Tour in a glass bottomed boat tomorrow. The tour will take us along the Heritage Listed Ningaloo Reef.
A visit to the local Markets located in the Federation Garden of the township before leaving the town to drive along the very beautiful beach drive in the Cape Range National Park. The road was excellent and the turnoffs to each beach were signposted very well. Our first stop was at the Tantabiddi Boat Ramp, obviously a popular place to launch boats as there were many boat trailers parked. It is also the area that most of the tours depart from to take tourists snorkelling, whale watching and exploring the Ningaloo Reef. Along the way there were several camping areas and we drove into a couple of them and they all have the most amazing views of the ocean and are well set out. The Milyering Discovery Centre was an interesting stop to read about the Reef, all the wildlife in the Cape Range National Park and the information on the marine life in the Reef. There are Whale Sharks, Humpback Whales, Reef Sharks Turtles and Manta Rays and over 500 species of tropical fish and 200 species of coral.
We continued our journey in the Park to see Turquoise Bay rated the second best beach in Australia. It has beautiful white sand and a crystal clear lagoon of turquoise water. A little further on we stopped at Sandy Bay to have our picnic lunch followed by swim in the beautiful clear waters. We shared a picnic table with 3 young French backpackers who were very friendly and it was interesting to hear of their travels here in Australia. We swapped blog addresses because they said they would love to read our blog as they were travelling to the areas we have seen. We drove on to Yardie Creek another quality camping area with beautiful views and water before heading back with a brief stop to see The Mandu Mandu Gorge and then the Mildura Wreck, a 1907 Cattle ship that ran aground off the coast and is still visible.
On our return to camp John spent quite some time cleaning the red dust from all the nooks and crannies of "Calinda", a job that is going to take some time to complete.