Day 126 – 11/4/14 - Cape Range National Park WA

We had managed to put it off but our time at Cape Range was finishing tomorrow and we had to go snorkelling at Turquoise Bay as part of our “Are We There Yet” tour. We were going reasonably early as we heard that by lunch it was very crowded.

Twenty kilometres up the road and we were walking into the beach. There is a pretty good current that runs across the coral at Torquoise Beach so we grabbed our gear and walked about 100m up the beach and headed out. We were all very excited as there was heaps and heaps of different kinds of fish. Tiny, tiny blue ones, star shaped ones with yellow heads, black and white striped bodies and funny ‘tails’ coming from their dorsal fin, mullet, snapper and more fish than you can imagine. There was also all kinds of coral. This is what we had come for! The best part was when a young turtle swam by and allowed us to dive down and swim happily along beside him. It was pretty special

We drifted along for about 20 minutes until we were now 100 meters down the beach and we swam into shore. Sam and I then went back up the beach for a ‘drift’. The highlight of this run was a wall where there were a big school of fish biding their time. Once we reached the end Jack and I had a drift each run being completely different to the one before. In the end I went out on my own and ventured a little further out, maybe 200m, where the corals changed into the ‘stick’ coral we so often associate with the Great Barrier Reef. There was massive patches of it, some 20 or 30m long and it was great fun watching the fish dart in and out of their well protected home.

We headed back and I spent the afternoon packing the boat up while the boys continued to fish of the rock, unfortunately with still no success. We had got to know a few of the other groups camping and two new ones, all who had kids, had arrived so about we had a bit of a happy hour. At 6 we all headed back to feed our kids and then happy hour phase 2 started. At some point we put the boys to bed and at around midnight I surrendered knowing I had a big day in front of me tomorrow.