A lone bird trilling with the first hint of dawn, followed later by a squabbling mob of corellas woke us from our slumber, the first rays of sunlight were filtering through the trees as we stepped out to start breakfast.  We were on the road by 7.45am following Highway 1 south the 39km until the turnoff to Coral Bay.  The trip across was, in places,  alive with wildflowers, we stopped in a couple of spots to have a closer look at them.  A green/yellow grevillia was that rich with nectar we ran our finger on the flower & licked the sweet nectar.   The sand dunes wander across the countryside, sometimes up to a kilometre apart & up to 20 metres high, mostly red, however, as we got closer to the coast the colour changed to sandy colour.  The road was very good & we followed two other caravans until they turned off to Exmouth.

Coral Bay was reached after 188km pleasant driving through a landscape that kept on changing, very poor sandy country, but the vegetation type, colour, height, species and flowers varied continually.  Coral Bay is a tiny community that consists of two caravan parks, about 20 houses & a small shopping centre.  We arrived just after 10am & were fortunate to be able to get a site next to each other, there were caravans lined up in the street waiting for the 11am access to the sites in the caravan parks.  Coral Bay itself has Ningaloo Reef right at its doorstep, you can step into the water & be swimming over coral not 10m from the shore.  We set up, went for a quick walk before lunch then we went for a long walk around the beach as it was low tide. The colour of the water here is even better than at Broome, the colour of the water is pale blue to dark indigo, beautiful.  On the way back we stopped at one of the coral viewing boats where they feed the fish every afternoon at 3.30pm.  There was quite a crowd gathered, both fish & people.  Tereza was standing in the water & these large fish called Spangled Emperor swam very closely around her.  The fish go crazy for the food thrown to them.  Afterwards we had a refreshing swim then a nice hot shower, the hot water is straight from the artesian bore, 830m down & is naturally hot.

John cooked another great meal, Moroccan Stew, washed down by some nice reds (yes, more than one).