Coral Bay chillin’

Sunday 4^th May 2008

Holly was very keen to have a quiet day and in fact, we were all a bit travel jaded (I know, only a week) so pottering around in the morning segued gently into pottering around in the afternoon... We did some snorkelling in the bay – Paul and Holly were the first out and spent ages marvelling at the fish and coral. The coral itself is fairly broken up close in but there are still lots of beautiful bits.

I got Katie going with her flippers and goggles – there were a couple of big fish swimming around people’s legs and she soon gained confidence and was as slippery as an eel. When Paul and Holly returned Paul coaxed Katie into a mask and snorkel and gave her some lessons on diving down and clearing her snorkel then clearing her mask. She picked it up very quickly so she should be ready for a proper snorkel tomorrow.

The girls then made sandcastles, waterholes and water courses, swam with fishes and generally had a fun time on the beach while Paul read the newspaper and I cooked the curry for dinner, hung out the washing, put up a shade cloth, fixed Katie’s skirt and Holly’s shirt etc. etc. (My excuses for having some quiet time!).

After dark the girls set themselves up outside with doona, pillows and teddies and listened to Roald Dahl’s The Witches on the Ipod while Paul and I checked out a bit more of our route plan.

PS. For those who are observant, this is an addendum, written whilst in Karijini amongst the wildlife which is what reminded me of these stories.

While attempting to tidy up the camper a bit – make the beds etc. I found a bunch of ants under Paul’s corner of the bed. At first it looked as tho’ they’d found a hoard of rice or some crushed biscuit but a closer inspection revealed all the ants scurrying to rescue their eggs! They’d set up camp under Paul’s pillow – no wonder I’d been waking up with them on my face in the night. They were soon dispatched and we determined to be more vigilant with the ant spray on the legs and wheels.

The other story is about the butterflies. It was probably the cyclone rain followed by the storm while we were in Kalbarri that gave ideal conditions for caterpillars to multiply. This resulted in literally millions of butterflies everywhere we went and the girls spent a fair bit of time trying to rescue the ones that had had a head on encounter with the Landcruiser. Once they’d established that they were definitely dead the delicate creatures were transferred to their collections books.