Cape Range National Park - Ningaloo Reef

THIS PLACE HAS BEEN THE HIGHLIGHT OF OUR TRIP!!

"Oh What A Feeling" On the sand dunes last night at Mesa Camp - We loved Cape Range and Ningaloo Reef!

We loved Cape Range National Park which is on Ningaloo Reef. We have spent the last 3 weeks camped here and it was very difficult to leave, we could have easily spent the maximum 28 days that you are allowed to camp there, but we knew we had to move on as there is still a long way to go before we are home again.

There are a number of camp sites in Cape Range National Park, which are situation in the sand dunes overlooking the various beaches. We spent our time at Mesa Camp and were extremely lucky as the people that camped there with us became family while we were there. We had so much fun with them all that it was very sad when saying goodbye to everyone, but we have already made plans to see a number of them once we are home again.

So what did we do there – well, we did a lot of snorkeling, our two favourite spots were Turquoise Bay and Oyster Stacks. The coral reef is just off the beach and in fact comes right up to the low tide mark at some places. So you simply put your snorkel gear on at the water’s edge and swim out. We saw so many amazing fish, from tiny little electric blue coloured things right through all sizes and colours, we even saw a reef shark (Cody was the one to spot the shark first he screamed "SHARK" very loudly and clearly underwater!). One of the highlights was certainly when we were lucky enough to swim alongside a turtle. There was lots of coral of course, a great big blue star fish and some sting rays, to name just a few of the things we saw. The colour of the water was incredible and unfortunately our camera was not able to capture the true colour – but it just shows that places like this are ones you have to experience for yourself.

We went out fishing a number of times on the boat and our incredible wildlife encounters continued out there. We saw whales every day, and they were often within 30 metres of us, but one day we were lucky enough to have a whale and her calf swim under our boat, they were only 2 metres under us and in only 10 metres of crystal water so we could see them clearly! We had giant sea turtles swimming around and under us all the time, dolphins were everywhere, we even spotted a couple of sea snakes and flying fish and were also lucky enough to have a Dugong swim around under our boat.

But of course the main reason for going out on the boat was to do some fishing and we did. Aidan and Cody both pulled in impressive sized Spanish Mackerels and Aidan also brought in a nice shark. We caught Spangled Emperors, and lots of Chinamen Cod and some huge squid (which managed to squirt their ink all over the Jaime, Aidan and the boat!). All of these were beautiful eating and we actually shared quite a bit of it with our fellow campers.

While at our campsite Aidan and Cody began doing some fun skipping competitions with the camp ground host who had a brought along some skipping ropes (mind you the camp ground host was in his 70’s, but extremely fit!) Over a couple of days this turned into a daily training workout or ‘boot camp’ session which had a number of fellow campers training as well. We would have a half hour circuit training each afternoon, followed by a swim in ocean and then set up all our chairs and have ‘happy hour’ for a couple of hours each night.

Near the end of our stay a couple of other families arrived and the boys had a great time playing with all the other kids on the beach. They would all go off hunting sand crabs at night with head torches and bring back a big bucket full of crabs to show us their catch. A ‘grey nomad’ lent them a kite and all the kids spent hours on the beach flying the kite on the windy days. A kite surfer arrived one afternoon and after he had finished kite surfing on the water he let all the kids have a go of the kite with him on the sand dunes, they all couldn’t stop laughing each time they got airborne across the sand.

While we were there we celebrated Jaime’s birthday, with a few drinks and a cake etc. But on our second last night we also celebrated Cody’s 9^th Birthday with a bang! He was one very lucky boy, who got spoilt rotten by all our fellow campers (a lot of who admitted they were missing their grandkids so wanted to spoil our kids instead!). We had planned to just have a little cake and some chips and lollies at ‘happy hour’ and get everyone to sing him Happy Birthday. Well everyone else decided they wanted to have a big party. He was unexpectedly given presents by all of the other campers and everyone brought along plates of party food and our camp hosts insisted on providing a cake – which turned out to be enormous! The celebrations started early and went well on into the night! All Cody had originally wanted to do on his birthday was swim on Ningaloo Reef and get a packet of Tim Tams so that he could have his first ever Tim Tam bomb – well he did both those and a whole lot more!

Ningaloo