Yardie Creek - 7 September 2017


The drive from Karratha to Yardie Creek in the Cape Range National Park was a long one - and we made it to Exmouth around 5 pm and decided to not drive the extra 90 minutes to Yardie Creek.  We had booked three night's at Yardie but with their very confusing and unwieldy booking system, and the fact it is so heavily booked, we only managed three nights on three different sites, so staying one night in Exmouth seemed a great idea.

We were allocated a site, pulled in, and who were we parked behind?  Donna and Mike - who we'd met back at Lake Argyle in July.  Along with Fay and Dave and Meg and Geoff we'd leapfrogged each other along the Gibb River Road, Derby, Broome, Tom Price and now here at Exmouth.  Small world!

We headed off early the next morning  via the Lighthouse Caravan Park to pop in to see Sandy and Jim before heading for Yardie Creek.  We found our site and hoped we'd be able to stay both nights in site 3 which was probably the best of the 10 sites. The beach is magnificent - soft, fine white sand and beautiful crystal clear waters.
The beautiful Yardie Creek beach.
The waters are beautiful and warm and we both enjoyed doing some swimming, snorkelling and fishing, the latter without much success although John managed to catch this ugly fish; thinking it was too small he threw it back.  Our Camp Host, Greg, said it is a tasty fish, there's no size limit and no bag limit!

John's catch of the day.
Geelong and Sydney were playing a final and Greg, had Foxtel!  He put his telly outside his annex and the majority of the campers were able to enjoy the game.  Half time brought a rush of activity as everyone raced back to their tents/vans to make dinner.  The second half of the game was enjoyed with lots of beautiful food smells.

John snorkelling at Turquoise Bay.
It is possible to drive along the beach from Yardie Creek to Coral Bay, however we didn't like the look of it.  It is a dangerous crossing and we decided to take the bitumen.


Yardie Creek
The sunsets like all of the sunsets have been magnificent - "there's nothing like a sunset over the ocean" says John obviously reminiscing of those over Pacifica, San Francisco.

Sunset over the ocean, Yardie Creek.
We decided to do a boat tour up Yardie Creek to the end of the Gorge and spotted 24 rock wallabies, sea egrets' huge nests and many fish and turtles in the water.  It was a lovely way to finish our time at Yardie Creek.
A rock wallaby and her young at Yardie Creek.


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