The scenery around Tom Price and Paraburdoo is really nice, lots of low red rocky hills covered with Spinifex that has a soft pillowy look but in reality is very spiky. Wildflowers in shades of white, pink and mauve are blooming everywhere at the moment.

We stopped at Paraburdoo, 79 km from Tom Price for petrol as the next leg of the trip to Nanutarra Roadhouse was about 275km. We refuelled, $1.63 a litre, had some lunch and continued on.

There must be some cows that are more easily fooled than others; right across north Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia are grids across the roads that stop the cattle from straying from certain areas. Occasionally there’ll be one that looks in every way like any other grid except that they are just painted lines on the road instead of an actual grid; these ones must be for the dumb cows.

The wind was horrendous as we neared the coast, really buffeting the bike about. It seems that since we’ve been in Western Australia that whenever we’re within 300km of the coast it’s really windy.

We saw the first emus of our trip today. We were on the last stretch heading for Coral Bay and about half a dozen of them took off as we approached (away from the road, luckily).

We had to battle with the wind to get the tent to stay up; it took several modifications before we succeeded. The caravan park we’re staying in is managed by Kelly & Jeff. Kelly grew up in the street in which we lived in Wangaratta; we’ll catch up with her tomorrow.

The nights are cold enough here that we’re running the heater.

We started out on a ride to Exmouth this morning. It was blowing a gale again so we decided not to continue on, the main thing I wanted to see in Exmouth was a lighthouse, but I’d rather miss seeing it than ride in that wind.

Back at Coral Bay we went for a walk along the white sands of the beach. The ocean is beautiful shades of blue and fish can be seen swimming right up to the shore. We saw some lovely green fish about 40cm long swimming in the shallow water just beside us. I later found out they were male parrot fish,

In the afternoon I went to one of the shops that offer tours and booked a trip in a glass bottom boat for tomorrow for myself, Tony doesn’t want to go.

There were 13 tourists and 3 staff on the boat. We sailed a short distance out to where the waves were breaking. There is coral everywhere here, not in bright shades as I had expected coral to be, but in muted shades of creams and dull greens and blue. Swimming amongst the coral is an amazing array of fish. The driver of the boat told us many interesting facts about the reef and the fish that inhabit it. The bottom of the boat has two sheets of 10mm glass laminated together and gives a magnified view of the ocean below.

We stopped and donned our flippers and masks and got into the water. A few people went with one of the staff on a guided tour and managed to see some turtles. I’ve never snorkelled before and felt more comfortable staying near the boat. There was plenty to see, lots of different types of fish including Spangled Emperor in large numbers, large schools of small blue fish, other blue fish with yellow tails, stripped fish in various colours.

Once we were all back on the boat we went to another location a little closer to shore and snorkelled again. Some pellets of fish food were thrown into the water to bring the fish in close; a licence is needed to be allowed to feed fish. I was swimming with fish all around me; I could have reached out and touched them, quite an experience.

As we were sailing away from this location we sailed over a huge school of bait fish, there were hundreds of small almost translucent fish.

I was a little disappointed with the photos I took on this excursion; if I did it again I’d probably buy a disposable waterproof camera. I did get a lady who wasn’t swimming to use my camera and take a couple of photos of me, I was glad I did that, it’s a good souvenir of the day.

After lunch I went back down to the beach and went for a swim and a walk along the shore. The water temperature is about 21° a little cold to initially get into but fine once you’re in.

I went back to the beach in the evening to photograph the sunset. There were quite a few people at the lookout watching the sun go down.

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