Coral Bay

We finally left Carnarvon for the final time and headed for Coral Bay.  Jenny had developed a head cold and really sore throat and was feeling hideous, which was terrible timing as she had tentatively booked on a scuba diving course and you can’t dive if you have any congestion in your ears or sinuses.

Coral Bay was very busy and we had to squeeze into a really tight caravan site.  Despite her being sick, I handed the wheel over to Jenny as she has a magical talent for backing the van. Although I do it my fair share of the time, she is much, much better at it and on this occasion we also had to avoid a tree and someone’s boat.  It was tricky, and as is usual when one of us gets out to help direct whoever is driving, a well-meaning grey nomad man commented that my husband was doing a great job, before becoming doubly effusive in his praise when he discovered that a woman was driving.  This praise was (as commonly happens) followed by his grey nomad wife giggling and saying that she never tows the van and aren’t we amazing and brave.  I’m not sure that they ever take that next logical step to realise that if we feeble women didn’t actually tow and reverse the van, we would be having a very strange holiday in the carpark at the caravan dealership.

Unfortunately our arrival at the caravan site coincided with our second battery completely failing and causing our UHF radio and car-fridge to turn off.  Our issues were obviously not solved and require more investigation.  Jenny was very sad about this.

We eventually got set up in our tiny little spot and Jenny went straight to bed.  She pretty much stayed there for 3 days, getting up for short spells each afternoon to take a walk to the beach or visit the town nurse.  Remote medical assessment is interesting.  The nurse in Coral Bay examined Jenny and called a doctor in Carnarvon to relay his assessment.  The doctor in Carnarvon agreed that she needed antibiotics and faxed a prescription to a chemist in Exmouth, who filled it and sent it by courier to the dive shop in Coral Bay where Jenny’s collected it at 4pm the following day.  She hadn’t been able to fit in with Scuba training dates in Coral Bay so had booked a course in Exmouth the following week.  She called them to tell them she was sick and ask what to do about the course and they were awesome, telling her that she could just move to the next course 4 days later.  It meant that we had to shuffle a few things around with our travel plan but it was all possible.

While Jenny rested, Ben and I went on a glass bottom boat tour in Coral Bay.  The reef is really amazing here and there are fish everywhere, really close to shore.  There were heaps of fish visible while we were still tied up to the shore with only about 3 feet of water under the boat.  It was amazing.  The snorkelling is brilliant and we saw dozens of fish species including lots and lots of massive Spangled Emperors that hang around in the shallows.  Mon, Wed and Fri they have a fish feeding session and you stand in mid shin deep water with hundreds of huge fish swimming around eating the pellets that you drop in the water for them. 

Beautiful coral under the glass bottom boat

Ben made great friends with a boy called Billy and his friend Regan.  I was very pleased about that because the previous day he had been playing with a boy called Jacob who had promptly taught him to swear.  Luckily Ben knows that’s not on and he told us straight away.  We also found ourselves camped 2 spots from Mark and Fiona who we had met at Gnaraloo Bay so we had lunch with them one day as Jenny’s ‘leave the sick bed’ excursion.

Outback Paddy

We were super lucky to be able to attend a concert by ‘Outback Paddy’, a travelling Irish musician who certainly loves Australia.  He performed two long sets of his own original songs which included gems such as “I Never Made it to Sydney as I Stopped in Kalgoorlie”.  In between every song, he would chat away and tell truly terrible ‘Dad’ jokes.  We thought he was a lovable larrikin until his second gig a couple of nights later when Billy’s Mum was entertaining a group of kids that had gathered on the lawn near Paddy’s performance space.  She had some bubble mixture and was blowing bubbles for the kids when Paddy cracked it.  He stopped mid song and started ranting about how rude it was to be playing while he was performing.  There was about an equal mix of old folk tut tutting in agreement and every parent of a child under ten staring in disbelief and remarking to their spouses what an old fool Paddy was.  We lost our Paddy love that night and our hearts broke a little.