Day 45-47. 18th to 20th June 2024. Coral Bay. There are plenty of fish (and Manta Rays) in the sea.

Now we are talking seaside towns. Not much more than two large caravan parks, a good little shopping arcade with a killer bakery, an upmarket pub and some average choices for fish and chips – we liked the town pretty much straight off the bat. What was given out though was our booked tour for the next day. It seems the wind has followed us from Broome where we had two tours cancelled due to gusty conditions. Apparently if you go on the boat in choppy conditions there is a very high chance of sea sickness, meaning people throwing up over the side of the boat, creating burley for sharks and thus making snorkelling an extreme sport. Either that or it is just unpleasant in the wind on the water.

As our main aim at Coral Bay was to get a tour to do some snorkelling off a boat, it was lucky we could get on one the next day snorkelling with Manta Rays. It did mean extending our stay by a day, and missing one night in our next stop at Carnavon. Given that we had already lost a deposit from changing our mind on staying at a station on the same night – we had paid for accommodation in three places for the one night – but it was worth it. The snorkelling was quite an experience. However, on the first dive I did end up scraping my ankle against some coral, and it did draw blood. Some antiseptic and all seemed to be good, but to keep some suspense in the article to get you to read to the end, I won’t tell you which ankle it was.

I learned a few things on the tour.

• Four Meter Manta rays swimming below you don’t look as big as you would think, and are very graceful to watch.
• Swimming with a tiger shark isn’t as scary as I thought – the photographer seemed pretty calm when she jumped in to take it’s photo.
• Swimming through a school of colourful fish makes you feel like you are dancing through a rainbow with bubbles
• Turtles are cheeky buggers that you can’t see when in the water, and when you hop back on the boat they float right where you were off the back of the boat waving at you
• Wetsuits can act as a flattering corset (to a point) and black is a slimming colour
• Once you are in a wetsuit that is one size too small, rubber is your new external epidermis for the whole of the tour
• When you are on a tour with 21 people on a boat and need to change swimming attire, the unwritten rule holds of what is seen on the boat stays on the boat.

I am thankful for my previous snorkelling training attempts in Exmouth and I wasn’t as anxious about Darth Vader constantly whispering in my ear. Linda really enjoyed it, being a more experienced snorkeller and it was good we could share the memory of swimming with reef sharks, lots of fish, turtles and seeing a tiger shark and dolphins.

With the town being quite remote, the caravan park has minimal fresh water, so the showers and everything else is from hot bore water. The other caravan park in Coral Bay reputedly charges $20 more a night as they have running fresh water. Our park has missed a trick here, as we have seen that other places have created baths and showers of “artesian waters”. Whack in a pool and they can be charging $100 entry into a spa as well.

Facilities. Passable, but the bore water has everything rusting and just does not do the job. 6/10.

It was my left ankle.