WA Coral Bay

29/8/2016 10.30 am, finally arrived and checked in to the Ningaloo Club OK but found I was too far from the boat Tour company I had booked, so re-booked with a local group. A failure to understand  my needs/plans or from me to communicate, but ultimately solvable. Lots of stuffing around on the Internet.

The lady at the front-desk helped mightly and I spent a little more money than planned. Still within budget. I will get to Monkey Mia (300km away) on the return journey and use the local tourist-flight to get the coverage of Shark Bay.

Before dinner I went with the desk-lady and her friend to feed some feral goats trapped on a nearby cliff edge. High-tides will ultimately subside but until then they are being fed by volunteers. It gave me a perfect chance to take photos of the Coral Bay coastline. The cliff was immediately opposite major navigation markers. I took my small camera for lightness/ease of use while scrambling around on sea-cliffs but it does not have a built-in GPS. Excellent shots of seascapes the French would have seen from the sea. I will be able to compare this when I take the local "Nature tour tomorrow".

Next day I am off at 9.00 for a "Nature tour"

29&30/8/2016. Still fighting the cold I got from the flight over from Cairns, so I was not going to risk "respiratory problems" and will be an observer not a snorkeler on the Nature Cruise.

9.15 am we were loaded onto a small bus and transported to the wharf where we were loaded onto an oversized launch. Just enough room for the 22 people if you sat up front on the bow. However over the next 5 hours I got exactly the view point of the coastline I wanted, matching the "landscapes/seascapes" on the edge of the French charts (drawn from the 1801-04 paintings by Petit). Almost certainly this tour was a retracement of this part of their Voyage.

Extras were Manta ray sightings and a close encounter with a migrating Humpback whale, which also would have been apparent to the 1801 sailors. The coastline in this region is low almost flat with no really major rivers. From an early explorers point of view it would have been very unpromising. Of equal importance was the presence of a hazardous barrier reef. I photographed both the landform and the extensive reef from "deck height" but an aerial view would be the only way the true magnitude of the danger could have been assessed.