Day 51 – 57
We have spent the last week in Coral Bay. This is a lovely little beachside hamlet (what do you call a place with a population of 192 that is made up entirely of 2 caravan parks, a backpackers accommodation, a resort which includes the local pub and the associated tourist requirements that go with that)? From our caravan site we can watch the kids in the park and the pool is just across the road. We haven’t used the car all week as Coral Bay is only about 500m from one end to the other so you never need it. The easiest beach to access is directly out the front and from there you can snorkel over the Ningaloo Reef and see a variety of fish and marine life. To the right of this beach is a Reef Shark Nursery where the reef sharks come to breed. You can walk down and have a look (pretty much just shadows in the water) but you are not allowed to swim there. This whole beach area is a sanctuary so there is no fishing allowed here which means that there is an abundant amount of fish for viewing and that they are not afraid of you.
The brochure said that one of the things to do in Coral Bay is feed the fish so that is what we did on our first day here. We took some bread and they swam straight up to us and took the bread from our fingers. The fish were quite large and the kids thought it was great. They thought it was so good that when “the friends from the road” (ffr) arrived a few days later Andy and the kids went with them to feed the fish again only to be told off by a man who told them they were running the risk of a $5000 fine and then again by a crabby lady who told them off for feeding them and for letting them touch them! Seems feeding the fish at Coral Bay is all about you standing on the shore at attention with everyone else and watching the rangers feed the fish for about 10 minutes – our way was much more fun and interactive.
The first couple of days were very windy; it was a little like the Fremantle Doctor blowing all day but apparently that is to be expected in this area. We had to drop the awning on the caravan as it felt like the van was going to lift off every other minute. The wind kept the temperature down in the high 20’s which was very pleasant and the kids were happy to have a swim in the beach earlier and then play in the park or at the pool for the rest of the day. Towards the end of the week the wind died down and the temperature ended up back in the low 30’s again.
Madi loved this place. It is one of the first places where there have been more girls than boys in the playground and I think she met them all. Every morning she was the first one up and she would go off to start visiting her friends. There is a little shopping village opposite the caravan park which has a few shops – Newsagency, Small Supermarket/hardware, Ladies Fashion, Bakery, Nurse and 3 shops to book different tours in – and Madi and her friends would go shopping there. It is hard to imagine how they could manage to spend so much time there given the limited number and relevance of shops and the limited amount of product (new stock only arrives once a week) but they did. One morning as Madi was heading out at 8am I asked her to bring back a loaf of bread for breakfast. At 10am when Matthew was complaining of starvation I went to find her and she was just coming out of the bakery having been distracted by the shops she had already visited on every day of the 4 days before! I found her one morning at the newsagency when we were supposed to be going out on a tour. She had been there for about an hour and I apologised to the shop attendant and tried to hurry her up but the shop attendant just laughed and said she was very polite, knows what she likes and drives a very hard bargain! By the end of the week Madi and her friends were very well known by everyone at the shopping village.
The shopping village actually did very well out of us. The kids pay day is Wednesday night and I can’t remember whether I explained previously but they get $25 each and whatever they have saved from the previous pays we match. The idea was to encourage them to save for a souvenir or whatever else they might want because early on they were costing us a fortune in drinks and ice-creams and we had to keep saying “No” all the time because everywhere we went they all wanted souvenirs. This worked well for the first couple of weeks but after that Rockefeller (aka Chris) worked out that if he bought in bulk at the Supermarket and stopped buying rubbish from Roadhouses he could make some big dollars. It got to the stage where he asked Andy to bank $100 so that each week we would have to give him at least $100 to match the amount banked. We did a quick calculation and realised he was going to cost us more in pocket money then the entire trip so this week Andy changed the rule so that moving forward the maximum we would match would be $50. The human character is a strange thing. Rather than continue saving and accumulating notes (which previously he had been using to fan himself with in front of the family) he decided there was no point in having any more than $50 next pay day so he unleashed himself on the shops (in Coral Bay of all the places to do this). Some of the items purchased were a necklace and another cap plus his standard bulk purchases of soft drink and chips but he added chocolates in as well and his rationing was much less stringent.
We only did one organised tour here as a family and that was to the outer reef on a Catamaran. We booked the trip for the Thursday morning and were lucky that the wind had died down. FFR arrived Wednesday and decided to come along too so it was a very enjoyable half day. It was fantastic as there were only 15 people on the boat, of which 7 were our combined kids, so there was heaps of room to sit or lie down out the front and move around without fear of losing your seat! We snorkelled in two different places and saw some Rays and Turtles as well as the standard fish (we are getting very blasé and spoilt regarding this stuff now) and coral. On the way back they lowered a boom net off the back of the boat and all the kids climbed on and got towed behind the boat which was a lot of fun for them.
Andy and Nick also did a full day’s charter fishing trip. Nick was very keen to do this, Chris not keen at all as it involved a 6.30am wake up call and 7am on the boat. They got back about 4pm and from all reports had a great time. Nick caught 6 fish – 1 was so ugly they used it for bait and 1 was undersize so they threw it back in. He was quite chuffed with himself and Andy had to gently pull him back into line when after his second catch he leaned over to the serious older gentleman beside him and said “You better get a move on that’s my second you know!” Andy caught 4 fish – 2 keepers – so Nick was rapt that he beat Dad; why is everything a competition? They were all really big fish (they have to be bigger than 60cm to keep) so we now have a freezer full of fish fillets and have eaten fish the last couple of nights which is actually very nice as it is beautiful and fresh and fish is so expensive over here that we normally wouldn’t have it often.
We have made some more friends here through Madi; of course, as my Dad says “she doesn’t wait for things to happen, she makes things happen”. The new friends are a family with 2 girls from Foster in NSW. We had actually met them on the Murion Islands boat trip out of Exmouth and than Madi spotted them in the playground our first day at Coral Bay. She introduced them to the FRR and we all had dinner in the beer garden at the pub one night which was lovely. Great view, big grass area for the kids to run around on and happy hour for an hour as well. The next two nights we had communal eating at our place – once because of the fish haul and the other for their eldest daughters 10th birthday. We might catch up with them again at Kalbarri if we are still there when they arrive.
I have to report that as Aunty Jo puts it “our gradual disconnection from society” may now be complete. I think we now officially qualify as “white trailer trash”. First there is Chris’ new haircut, which some people have commented unfavourably on but which really bumped us up the ladder in terms of van park credibility. He has also stopped wearing shoes and a shirt so has assimilated beautifully. Then there is Bubba who basically refuses to shower as he swims everyday, refuses to change his clothes (nothing new there) and pretty much looks like a street urchin. Madi has taken the Smiths Beach “mi casa su casa” to extremes by disappearing at 8am in the morning and returning sometime around dark purring like a cat as she has been fed by about 5 different households during the course of the day. Nicky collided with the beach volley ball net in the playground one night playing 40/40 and now has a graze under his eye which coupled with the fake tattoos on his shoulder blades has upped his cred considerably. Then there is the piece de resistance – when I’m doing the laundry and someone asks me in awe where I’m from and what my husband does that allows us to travel like this, I tell them he’s unemployed!
Its fantastic the dream has really come together here at Coral Bay and we are sad to be leaving and heading to Monkey Mia tomorrow but who knows maybe we can top this somehow – dreadlocks for Madi, body or facial piercings for the boys – I’ll let you know.
