We woke up at 8am, such was the sleep. We’d planned on staying here another day since we weren’t booked in anywhere else, but upon looking out at the water we started pondering another location. Where had the water gone? I grabbed the GPS and went for a walk … from the high tide mark to where the water currently was, was 550m … and it was still receding at a rapid rate, crabs and octopusses scrambling to keep up with it.

There’s a caravan on the shore way back there somewhere

After my kilometre round trip I grabbed the free camps book and found slim pickings between us and Coral Bay. There were a few roadside stops and also Warroorra Station. The decision made, we did a late packup and got underway.

Lunch beside the road in the middle of nowhere. Fuel and groceries at Carnarvon. Kel made a call to Coral Bay to see if we may be able to arrive a day earlier as we were well within distance of there. We were in luck. They had an unpowered site available for the night, so we grabbed it.

We did encounter a nasty accident along the way. A Navara had clipped a road train and subsequently rolled a few times. Amazingly no major injuries whatsoever to the humans … the Navara was a right off and had done its job of human protection very well indeed. A bit of a sober reminder to take due care out here.

We crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and nearly immediately the temperature improved. New Beach was about 24. Tropic of Capricorn saw 29 on the thermometer.

The kids didn’t know that we were aiming for Coral Bay and were just a little bit excited when they looked up from their DS’s.  We pulled in to Coral Bay at just after 3pm and did a quick setup since we were moving the next morning. We went straight over to the beach and had a quick snorkel. Not a huge lot to see off the main beach … mainly because we didn’t go out far enough we later learned. We did spot a few inquisitive snapper and barracouta though.

A fairly early night was had, since we were all buggered. Today marks the 1/4 way mark of the trip.

[sgpx gpx=”/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/2011-08-05.gpx”]