We were leaving Coral Bay by 9:30 with the temperature already hovering above 20DegC. The drive to Exmouth was fairly uneventful, we passed Learmonth RAAF airbase and then the big prawn just outside Exmouth which reminded us of the King Prawn industry up here. Their main market is export to Japan and we heard on the radio that they are having a very good year catching about 3 time as many prawns as normal. Interestingly, the catch limits are not determined by weight of numbers but the Department of Fisheries monitors the size of prawns and use that information to determine when prawn fishing stops to prevent overfishing.
We were in Exmouth by 11am, stopped at the tourism info, and bumped into a couple from Bright which we had first met in Esperance a few weeks back.
The next stop was the shopping centre for some food and we also had to visit Brumbys - a Bakery franchise - which we remembered from our last trip as the sell very tasty Chocolate Croissants.
Other things on the shopping list were a new set of goggles for me and some sea booties for Alexander and me to wear with out fins. The obligatory visit to the local tackle shop resulted in some more lures for our collection and lost of advise from the friendly staff about the best fishing spots.
We also saw newspaper articles in shop windows about french backpackers that steal food from supermarkets in Carnarvon and other areas. Apparently word got around amongst the frogs (via Facebook) that the supermarkets are easy targets. They are not used to shoplifting in this area so this discovery made the news and talkback radio.
After refuelling the headed out of Exmouth to Cape Range National Park where I had booked us in for 3 nights, or so I thought. About 30km out of Exmouth is the entry station to the park which is always fully booked so very difficult to get a campsite. The nice lady at the entry station confirmed that she had us booked for 3 nights, but not until tomorrow! I double checked on the receipt and it clearly stated that our booking was for tomorrow - oops, minor miscalculation on my part, we arrived a day early!
A few km's back towards Exmouth is Yardie Homestead, a caravan park, and we had our caravan parked there by 3pm. We did a quick caravan setup and then drove Tantabiddi a short distance away where we spent the remainder of the afternoon on the beach. Alexander did a little bit of fishing but apart from one missed hookup and a lost lure he had nothing to report.
Yardie Homestead is an old farm where a lot of the farm infrastructure has been converted to accommodation and a sizeable caravan park has been created around it. Lots of people seem to be here with their boats and at the fish cleaning tables we see quite sizeable catches. The freshwater is limited only for drinking as it is made by reverse osmosis from the local bore. Salty bore water is used for anything other than drinking water. Bore water is also very soft and it's really hard to get soaped under the shower. In typical station fashion the power is from a generator and therefore limited - no zircon, microwave, kettle or toaster to be used otherwise the circuit breaker will pop.
Here is the link to todays travel map.
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