Katherine in Exmouth

It has been a wonderful week of perfect weather, beautiful surroundings and new experiences. We camped at Kurrajong bush camp in the Cape Range NP. What a spot- if you are ever up this way it's worth booking into sites 2,3 or 4 (see below for photo of site and our van in the middle).
We walked into Yardie Creek Gorge, spotting bats, kangaroos, rock wallabies and water birds. The view from the top and the echo was spectacular!! From there we headed up the coast to Oyster Stacks at high tide. Here you enter the water over the rocks and immediately are in the world of coral and bright coloured fish. Spectacular.

The fishing charter that Bruce and Josh went on involved a 3-4m swell, lots of near catches and a few large Spanish Mackeral and Barracouda. We ate well that day on the freshest of fresh fish.
Bruce had a birthday and he and Oliver caught a fish from the beach that day to celebrate. Thank-you Spangled Emperor, you made his day.
Oliver is enjoying fishing- look at the shark he's got in the photo below- he wished he caught it!
Yesterday we went out on the reef in a glass bottom boat and snorkeled with thousands of fish and many types of coral. It was amazing.
Wild flowers are beginning to appear as we drive along which is a blessing as we are really early on in the season.
Tomorrow we head inland toward Karijini NP for a change in the scenery.

Emily@Exmouth

Today we have driven north from 14 mile beach past lots of termite mounds and arrived in Exmouth. We saw 1or 2 Emus and some kangaroos on the way.
Dad and Josh just booked onto a fishing charter for tomorrow. Hopefully they will catch some big fish!! They were told it's not worth catching anything smaller than 50cm, but really any fish would be accepted by these two because they haven't caught anything yet.
Off to Cape Range National Park now.

Joshua @ Warrooga Station, 14 mile beach

We are at 14 mile beach having lots of fun, despite the wind it's all ok. On the way in we saw three Emu's crossing the road in front of us. It was very bumpy and had to stop four times to flick a switch under the bonnet. We also saw lots of termite mounds. We drove 20km on the long sandy and very bunpy road in and since found out we could have taken a 10km route.
Dad tried fishing, unfortunately without success. Oliver and I made a big wall out of sand and then made a big hole behind to sit in. We built it fairly close to the water so that the waves would come right up to the big wall and try to break it.

Katherine@ Quobba station

We are staying at Quobba station just out of Carnarvon. It's a sheep station on the coast. The landscape is very rocky with very little beach to be seen. The blowholes at the waters edge nearby were a lot of fun to wait for and watch burst through.
This afternoon (after spending most of the morning changing a flat tyre) we headed to a local swimming and fishing spot.
We were planning on trying a little swimming until we were approached by a couple to say that they had seen a gummy shark 5 metres off shore the previous afternoon. The play very rapidly moved to the sand!!

Emily @ Monkey Mia

Today was full of new experiences. We got up really early to drive to Monkey Mia so we could see the dolphins being fed. They came so close to us that they were less than 2 meters away from our knees. After that amazing experience we walked down to the restaurant and ate an enormous brunch! Oliver ate until he was bursting. That was the first time we had seen him full!! And even Abby didn't say "I'm hungry" for the rest of the day!
Later in the afternoon we visited Francois Peron National Park for some sandy 4wd roads and a swim in the artesian spring. The homestead had all the old shearing sheds to look through. I loved seeing the kitchen and shearers quarters with all the old things in them.

Shark Bay

We arrived in Denham, Shark Bay yesterday afternoon in the rain and today we began exploring the area a little.
It was raining this morning so we headed to the local 'Ocean World' to be introduced to all the local marine life. I think Bruce and Josh enjoyed the tour of local catchable fish... still hoping to catch one of their own. The feeding of the sharks was a bit of fun and Emily definitely got the best photos there.
After lunch we headed out to Shell beach which is an amazing and unique piece of this country of ours. It is a 60km stretch of coast where a species of cockle thrive in the high salinity and have no predators. The beach is made of billions of tiny cockle shells 8-10 m deep!!
It was a lovely afternoon of building shell castles, getting wet in our clothes (we thought it would be too cold to swim) and lying about in the sun.
There is a definite focus on fishing in the area and today was the day to give the squid by the pier a go... The photo below is not a great one but does reflect the deflated hearts and hopes of the boys in our family.
Bruce has returned to the pier tonight to try again...

Josh leaving Kalbarri - Day 17

We have spent the last two days camped by the Murchison River. We have explored lots of gorges. We climbed down the Ross Graham Gorge and explored the river and lots of rocks. We climbed a huge cube shaped rock.
We also went to Natures Window which was a 700m rocky and rough walk down from the car park. Abigail also commented when we got to Nature's Window, "Where is Nature?" then she said "where does Nature have her breakfast?" that was when mum said that maybe Nature ate breakfast at the rock table she was sitting on.
We also gave the river Bream a good feed of prawns from our rods in the afternoon.