31/08/2016. Coral Bay Ningaloo WA. The task
for today was to locate the Coral Bay Marine Research Station of Murdoch
University. I had done a Visiting Fellowship with the Freemantle Campus of
Murdoch in 2004 (working with their fisheries population modelling group). Through
those contacts I had an informal introduction to the Station Manager, who had apparently
worked at CSIRO at around the same time that I did (?).
In the event I located the Research Station
and called in. There was about 20 students ready to go out on a research cruise
but no station manager. As luck would have it he had been called away to Perth “for
a few days”. Also no obvious presence of AIMS at the station (but I had heard
that they had been “cut” as a funding/savings measure). So my second-string for
a possible reef trip was not useful. Luckily my commercial “Nature Cruise” had
been spectacularly successful so I had gained 90-95% of what I needed for the
Ningaloo region.
I arranged to tag along on another
foreshore 4x4 drive for this evening with a staff member of the Ningaloo Club. That
will be further south than Coral Bay and dovetails into the Northern cruise I
did by boat. While not the full extent of their Voyage I have seen a fair slice
of this northern coastline that was reported and drawn by the French in
1801-04.
For the rest of the day I walked to the
foreshore for some local photographs of both the foreshore and the proximity of
the coral reef. I also took the opportunity for “Housekeeping” tasks and ran my
laundry through the laundromat, while I worked on my MA Thesis, Introduction
chapter, to be submitted in October.
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