Snorkelling at Greens Pool

Snorkeling in Greens Pool, William Bay National Park

We left Albany this morning and drove to Greens Pool (an ocean lagoon) at Williams Bay National Park.  It was cool and actually rained a bit at about 6 am this morning, but by the time we got to the ocean it was quite nice.  We decided to try snorkelling in the pool, and it turned out to be the best snorkelling we’ve had since we were on the Great Barrier Reef.  The pool is very sheltered from the ocean by large rocks.  Within the pool the water was quite calm, though there were some small waves from the strong south easterly wind (the wind did cause us to drift while we were snorkelling).  There were many fish, and lots of very interesting seaweed and sponges.  The fish are large since spear fishing is not allowed here.  We snorkelled for about 45 minutes until we got too cold and came out of the water to warm up.  Half an hour or so later we were back in the water, went to a different part of the pool and swam around the rocks observing many large and varied kinds of fish until we were once again too cold to continue.

We then came back to our motorhome.  A woman was peering in through the window.  She was curious and thinking about buying something like it with her sister.  We showed them around the inside, and told them how much we liked the layout of this motorhome.

Elephant Rocks, William Bay National Park

After lunch we walked to the Elephant Rocks.  These are large granite boulders over 10

Elephant Rocks, William Bay National Park

metres in height, and they have been eroded and polished smooth into shapes that do look very much like large elephants, some complete with trunks.  By this time it was very windy so we decided not to snorkel again.  Although the water wasn’t extremely rough, it would have been more difficult than it was in the morning, and because the water temperature isn’t really warm, even for us cold blooded Canadians, we decided not to go in.

Instead we drove on to Shannon National Park where we have camped for the night.  It is a very nice campsite, and has running water and showers.  They use a wood burning boiler to heat the water, and someone else had lit it so we had a nice warm shower to wash off the ocean salt.  It even has picnic tables, which is really rare in the Australian parks. There are a lot of currawongs here.  A couple sat on the tree above the picnic table screeching at us.  Then they flew down and started to eat the bugs off the front of the motorhome.

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