Yardie Creek

Today we said goodbye to Coral Bay and headed towards Exmouth. The whole of this peninsula is such different terrain yet again. It is sparse red arid desert like land with termite nests everywhere. Sections of it have been burnt and there are green shoots popping up through the burnt stubble. The horizon is vast as there are no trees anywhere just occasional shrubs. Temperature is high again. 

Landscape is littered with Termite mounds

The Ningaloo peninsula is quite unique with the Cape Range running its length and a dominating feature seen from both sides of the peninsula. 

We do some shopping and head off to Ningaloo coast for a few days of lovely snorkelling. We had barely got onto the coast when we started seeing warnings about the irukandji problem. 14 people had been hospitalised in the past couple of weeks with  irukandji jellyfish sting symptoms. Plus there were a lot of red jellyfish in the water and on the beaches. We were devastated as after a lot of deliberation we decided not to take the risk. 

So we set up camp at Yardie Creek which is a very small NPWS campsite. We cheered ourselves up by defrosting some chocolate cake. About 4 we pumped up Ashley's pack raft and went paddling to explore the gorge which has the only water in it. It was just beautiful. The reds and the oranges of the rock were quite spectacular. And we saw several of the endangered Black-Flanked Rock Wallaby. They were so cute and high up on the gorge wall. They would stop and watch us go past. And we saw eagles and Osprey as well. The sun set just as we arrived back and we walked along the beach enjoying the changing colours of the sky. 

Sunset from our campsite