The weather seems to have caught up with us this week , wind , wind and more wind ! Makes doing anything near or in the water a bit difficult , but - there's always a but - we did get a snorkel in at Oyster Stacks in Cape Range NP . It would have to be one of my favourite places to snorkel - the types and sheer number of fish is staggering .
This is when I 1st got in , these yellow & black striped fish were busy searching for food .
The water clarity was pretty good as well , and while the coral here isn't as colourful as in Queensland , there's plenty of it .
Came across this colourful collection of fish busily feeding , not worrying about me at all .
Not long after I swam into this large school of fish , there were hundreds , they swam all round me , everywhere I looked they were there .
There was a few of these interesting ones as well .
This one is amazing - it has an electric blue border .
This is soft coral , and moves with the currents .
With the wind , we ended up doing a lot of reading , but did go for a drive as well . We'd seen this track that headed in from the coast to the mountain range and carried on up the range and over the top. It also continued over towards Exmouth . After some slow driving over a lot of rocky stretches and making our way up part of the climb , we stopped to go for a walk to check the track to see if we'd take the ute any further . The rocks were pretty serious and we decided not to bother going further - didn't want to damage the ute . The views were great from the top , this is looking back down to the western side of the peninsular .
This is back to the eastern side .
This is beside the track , a rugged piece of landscape .
While we were looking at the view we noticed another vehicle going down a different track below us so we went down and found the track that led into another little gorge and some caves .
A rugged walk up the rocky , scrubby hill to the cave revealed a cave about 25m wide 3m high and about 10m deep . You could tell it's been lived in , the ceiling was blackened from fire smoke , and then there's all the etchings in the ceiling as well . As we walked , with each step you could see this fine dust explode from under our feet .
These cliffs and cave are limestone and are still growing stalactites and stalagmites , there was areas of flow stone and stalactites like this one dripping water down .
The local bees are onto it as well , coming in for a drink from where the water is dripping .
Another cave slightly higher up shows more features , but wasn't used for living as it was too low - still impressive though .
The red sandy track that we drove back out on was surrounded by spinifex and small shrubs .
Sand has corrugations as well !!
Friday came and the rain also arrived , it was overcast when we left and the further we went south into the NP the wetter it became . Our neighbours at Yardie told us about a gorge walk that we hadn't heard about previously , so that'a where we went . A tour bus and a motorhome were parked in a large flat area , but the track continued on another 500m to the start of the track to Pilgonoman Gorge .
As we arrived and parked the rain started , so we stopped and waited for a while . The 2 people from the motorhome walked in , then the tour group walked out , the rain drenching the front of them , not good news for them , the track back to the bus turned around so that the rain also hit them on the back as well , so they got drowned . The 2 motorhomes walked back out shortly after with rain jackets on , so weren't quite as wet as the others . The gorge looked quite promising , just had to wait until the rain eased off , so after about 20 mins we put our wind/rain jackets on and took the umbrella's and headed in to the gorge .
Black Striped Rock wallabies inhabit this area - there are 6 of them in this photo .
The rain continued , so did we , sheltering under a rock overhang for a few minutes . There were these small gum trees starting to burst into flower , an interesting contrast to the red & black cliffs of the gorge .
Some of the small shrubbery also had these little white flowers just coming out .
You can see by the stains on the rocks where the water seeps out and runs down the rocks .
Another very small flower Lyn found - only 4 or 5 mm across .
The colours are incredible , even amongst the rain - taking photo's gets a bit tricky when you're balancing an umbrella with one hand , and the camera with the other !!
That's it for Cape Range & Exmouth , we're heading further north tomorrow .
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