Exmouth Town Centre is located on the Eastern side of North West Cape, but the Ningaloo Reef is on the Western side, as is the National Park, so this morning we plan to have an exploratory tour over to the west side where snorkelling is best, fishing is reputably good and the beaches are very popular. At the very bottowm of the National Park is Yardie Creek where we have booked a boast cruise for tomorrow so we do not intend to travel that far down today.
As it is National Park, we will need to take food and water, so we first call in to the Ningaloo Bakery, in Exmouth, and buy some curried egg and lettuce rolls for lunch before heading North.
First stop is Bundegi Beach, which is at the top of the Cape but still on the East side. It is a pretty stunning beach with both swimmers and fishermen enjoying themselves at a relatively low tide.
There is also a boat ramp that is currently closed due to cyclone damage earlier this year
Just behind the beach is an array of VLF (Very Low Frequency) antennas, built by the US Navy in 1967, now belonging to the Naval Communication Station Harold E Holt. Jointly operated by the US and Australia this station sends massive 1 MW signals to submerged submarines in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The array covers 1000 acres and is the largest in the World.
Our next destination is Lighthouse Beach, and the Vlaming Head Lighthouse, built 61 m above sea level and completed in 1912 and decomissioned in 1967.
Along the way to the lighthouse there was a diversion to the coast to view the wreck of the SS Mildura, which accelerated the construction of the lighthouse.
The remains of SS Mildura
Vlaming Head Lighthouse
The views from the lighthouse hill we pretty astounding, and the road up to it needed concentration, at which some driver obviously failed.
There is also a WW2 story associated with this lighthouse as a radar base was also established here as the area served as a refueling depot for US ships. The cyclone damaged remains are still there.
We could also see a closed caravan park, probably another cyclone victim.
The LVF array at the top of the Cape is much clearer from this vantage point and there is a bit of further information about it including the relative height of the highest tower in the array compared with well known landmarks.
Tower Zero is the central tower in the star shaped array of antennas
In keeping with blackout Bowen's green dream, this array uses roughly 27,000 litres of diesel per day to run the generators to power the transmissions.
Just below the Lighthouse, is Hunter's beach, very popular with surfers. There was a coffee truck there doing a great trade, selling breakfast to surfers, coffee and ice cream. The South American operator of the van was very talkative, and had lived in Mona Vale for 5 months before ending up at Exmouth.
It is a nice beach with a good surf break. There were a lot of South Americans here enjoying the surfing.
The coffee was filter coffee, but not bad, and the odd breakfast and ice cream servings I saw looked impressive. He said he is here 7 days a week, so it must be a good little business.
We ventured on further, entering the National Park, and stopping at the Information Centre, Discovery Centre. They had toilets, a store that sold merchandise with Ningaloo branding, a bit of hot food and cold drinks. After a comfort break, we moved on to discover the snorkelling areas for which this coastline is famous. but first we must read the notice outside the visitors centre, which informs us that the best snorkelling area is closed due to a beached whale a week or so ago that has been feeding sharks ever since.
We also added to our collection of wildflower photos with Sturt's Desert Pea flourishing in the carpark.
Anyway, we continued on to the first high profile snorkelling beach called Lakeside, very close to the visitors centre. It is another very nice beach with an instruction that you need to walk 500m down the beach from the carpark to reach the area for snorkelling. As we are on a reconaissance mission today, and it is very hot in the middle of the day, we file this for future reference. being Sunday, there is also a lot of people here.
We are beginning to notice that there is a severe lack of shade anywhere along this coast and we are now at a stage where we are looking for somewhere to stop and enjoy our lunch. Perhaps our next destination, Turquoise Bay with be the spot. It isc another highly recommended snorkelling spot.
Alas, whilst another lovely beachside with good snorkelling potential, there is no shade or seats to have a picnic break.
People in the know have bought their own gazebos/ umbrellas
We decide to head a little further South to Mandu Mandu Gorge, surely there would be some picnic tables at a site that hosts a 2 hour return walking trail.
Along the way was the turnoff to Oyster Stacks, which we had been told is the best snorkelling spot on this coastline, but is currently closed. We went to see what we were missing out on.
Oyster Stacks does look great for snorkelling, maybe it will open before we leave
Once again we are disappointed, I guess we were spoilt by Karijini National Park, where the facilities were exceptional. Nevertheless, we took a short walk along the trail to Mandu Mandu Gorge, hoping to see some shady spot where we might take a break for lunch.
The walk seemed to be along the gravelly river bed and back up along the ridge of the gorge with an estimated 2 hours duration, not meeting our current requirement for a nice shady spot for lunch.
At a total loss as to where to have lunch, we drive back to the visitors centre where we know they have tables and chairs, shade and toilets. It seems everyone had the same idea, but we did manage to find a seat that met our needs.
On the way back, we decide to call back in to Bundegi Beach to do some fishing, as it is almost high tide and we did bring some prawn bait with us.
We caught a nice bream, and a slightly undersized stripey that we threw back. They are a bit fussy here about where you clean fish, so it is now well into the afternoon and we head back to town and we went to the marina in town where they have proper fish cleaning tables.
There was another group at the table who were cleaning their catch from the Muiron Islands. It was a bit embarrassing putting my bream on the same table as their catch.
A huge coral trout in the foreground and equally big Tuskfish on the other side of the table
As we were talking, I think they felt sorry for us and gave us a couple of good sized fillets of blue lined emperor.
It has been a full day, but we have now seen what is around, and have our cruise of Yardie Bay tomorrow morning. Snorkelling, fishing or bushwalking are all potential other activities.
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