2006/08 Australia trip - Kurrajong, Cape Range |
|||
August 2006
Dear All,
At the end of part two of our long Australian trip we’d just driven between the mountains of the Cape Range peninsula and the Exmouth Gulf to the busy holiday town of Exmouth, one of the gateways to the Ningaloo Reef. The reef stretches south from Exmouth and protects the coast from the Indian Ocean.
Sunday July 23rd
The beaches around Exmouth were pretty with white coral and turquoise water, but a bit too crowded for our taste, so we were heading for Cape Range national park. We’d been in the national park briefly up at Shothole Canyon, but now as we drove into the park again the entrance station had a big sign saying “No camp sites available”. Apparently the school holidays continued until the Monday, a day longer than we had expected.
We had a quick look at the park before we turned around and looked for an alternative place to stay. I’d expected the ocean side of the mountains to be steep with sea cliffs, but there is actually a plain stretching from the mountains to the sea, suggesting that the land is rising. The plain looked to be busy with wildlife. In just a couple of minutes we saw a group of emus, a mob of kangaroos, and some bustards, large goose-like birds. We would be back to see more the next day, but for that evening we turned around and checked into the Yardie Homestead caravan park, and had the luxury of electricity as well as showers and the noise of a busy campground.
 |
Cape Range birds (4.02) |
 |
|---|
Monday July 24th
We went back the Cape Range entrance station next morning and, after lining up for a while, found that there were still a few sites available. We chose the one at Kurrajong as it doesn’t allow generators. We had to get there within an hour and claim the site or it would be freed up for someone else to use.
Kurrajong turned out to be a nice little spot, just one row of dunes away from the beach, which had a line of rocks, then a sapphire-coloured lagoon, and then the Ningaloo Reef. The campground hosts, Merle and Frank, made us feel at home. We had booked for just one night but Merle said most people ended up staying longer than they had originally planned.
After an early lunch we set off to explore. We went to a bird-hide at Mangrove Bay, but as it was low tide the birds were mostly out on the mud flats, with very few in the lagoon behind the mangroves. Sandie found these tiny fiddler crabs in the mud. That 
claw looks fearsome but the whole crab is less than an inch across. There were dozens visible at times but any movement by us would cause them to disappear back down their holes.
Nearby Sapphire Bay is a popular snorkeling spot as the reef is close to shore there, and also a great spot to enjoy the sun and sand, though it looked like swimmers would have to be very careful of the currents.
We gradually learned a little more about the Cape Range area. The peninsula is another ancient reef, uplifted from the sea. Even the central mountains we’d seen at Shothole Canyon were part of a reef, and it’s the reef’s limestone that’s eroded into those steep canyons and convoluted rocks and caves. The park includes the mountains and much of the coastal strip behind the reef, and as we’d already seen, the strip is home to a wealth of wildlife. The surf roars against the nearby reef but on our side of it the water is calm and a thousand shades of blue. The beaches are coral, tough on bare feet, and a dazzling white, tough on bare eyes!
We found some more Sturts desert pea plants at Cape Range. The flowers are the same except for the Bart Simpson eyeballs which are the same brilliant red as the rest of the petals, a clue that the cape had once been an island and that these peas had been isolated from their cousins on the mainland.
Ningaloo Reef is the world’s prime spot for snorkeling with the whale shark, a peaceful and harmless fish the size of a bus, but I passed on that as I don’t have prescription goggles, and I’d probably miss the bus! It was also past the prime season for the sharks, but of course you can always pay for a boat trip to go look for them!
There were a couple of walking trails that looked interesting on the map. We stopped at the visitors’ centre, where we found out that the trail up Yardie Creek had just been closed for repairs, so we booked up for a boat trip on the creek for the next day. It seemed that Merle would be right about our staying longer. Similarly, we found that we didn’t have enough time for us to do the hike up the Mandu Mandu Gorge, so we postponed that until the next day too.
As we drove back to the campsite, we saw that the kangaroos and euros had come out in force at sunset. There 
were dozens of them around the road and all the tracks that led to the beaches. What are euros outside of Europe? They are wallaroos. What are wallaroos? Well, just in case you become experienced enough to be able to tell a kangaroo from a wallaby, there is another animal in-between. That’s the wallaroo or euro. In this place, just for confusion, the red kangaroos were quite small and the grayish wallaroos were sometimes larger. Amongst these confusing marsupials, we also found this echidna who didn’t have time to bury himself in the sand before we’d shot a few pictures. Echidnas are marsupials, as they have a pouch, but they also lay eggs so they are monotremes as well, like the platypus.
Back at Kurrajong we booked up for another night’s camping, as we still had at least half the park to see. The tide was turning and we heard the surf crashing on the reef. Merle said that there had been an earthquake the previous week in Java and that had sent a small tsunami onto this coast. Fishermen had seen the ocean retreat, but when the big waves came the reef had taken the brunt and saved the shore. She said that she and her husband and the other campers hadn’t seen anything, but they’d noticed the extra noise as the tsunami waves hit the reef