Snorkelling at Lakeside, Cape Range National Park
It was a very warm day today, one of the warmest we’ve had in weeks, with the temperature around 37 C. First this morning we stopped at the tire repair shop, and had our one most worn tire replaced by the new spare. It was a good thing we did, as the tire winch couldn’t be reached by the wrench, the back bumper got in the way. However the repairman put a bend in the winch wrench, and with that we were able to get the spare tire off. It would not have been fun trying to do that out on the side of the road!
We went back to Cape Range National Park, and stopped at the tourist information site. It hadn’t opened yet, though the sign said it opened at 9, so we waited a few minutes until they started operating. Two people were in front of us in the line and booking campsites. The woman at the desk told both of them “you can’t go in to Lakeside as the road is washed out,” so we were not sure where we could snorkel. The tide wasn’t right for Oyster Stacks until after lunch and we had to be back in Exmouth to get our air conditioner fixed.
When I asked her if we could walk in to Lakeside she said,”Of course,” so that is what we did. It was about a twenty minute walk to the beach, and then another 10 minutes or so farther down the beach to start snorkelling. There is quite a strong current that follows the shore north. At first we didn’t go far enough south, so started swimming that way, but it was much too hard, so we went back to shore and walked farther down the beach.
There were many fish at this site, including a number of species that we haven’t seen before. Some looked much like a catfish with large barbels on their mouth. They were a very shy species and would swim under the rocks whenever you approached them.
After we’d swum north with the current for a while we came out, got our backpack which we’d left at the site we first entered, and took it back down the beach again. Enid swam a long way out looking for the coral, but she missed it. Instead, when we turned back we ran across a school of very large fish, probably about a metre long and with thick bodies. I’d guess they would have weighed thirty pounds or more. They were swimming together with a school of much smaller silver fish with very thin bodies. There would have been several hundred fish in the school.
We did find the coral again, and drifted over it for a second time. This time Enid spotted a ray, and I found some very long thing eel-like fish. We walked back to the motorhome after this, but it was quite a late lunch and we got back into town at about 2:30. We stoppped in at the air conditioner repair shop, but the repairman wasn’t there yet, so I drove Enid back to the caravan park. I went back and waited at the shop, but just as the repairman got there, the company got a phone call that someone had driven into a power pole and several blocks of the town were without power. This repair shop must have some kind of a contract, because the repairman told me he had to go, and so we are to go back to his shop tomorrow morning at 7:30.
While driving back to the caravan park, I passed an automotive repair shop. I stopped to see if they could do an oil change, and have arranged that for Thursday morning before we leave. So Exmouth has been a place where we’ve had a lot of repairs done. We should now be good to get back to Sydney.