Exmouth - Cape Range

Dampier is a nice quiet seaside village with and the small van park is a great place to sit on the waterfront watching the iron ore ships being loaded directly in front and to the right the stacks with huge flames burning off the excess LNG are also visible a couple of km’s up the coast.  The harbour looks like a great place to fish but the fishing is all off shore with dozens of boat trailers and 4WD’s parked at the boat ramp most of the time.  The market at Karratha on Sunday was the best Carol has been to yet.  It was a smallish market at one of the primary schools and only went from 10am to 2pm.  Despite having good sales we were packed up and gone by 1.30pm as it was hot and most people left at lunch time.

Hearson Cove - crushed shell beach 2km from LNG Plant

Ore trains arriving at Dampier for ship loading

We were going to call in to Onslow for the next stop but what was once almost a ghost town is now a camp town with hi-vis everywhere to accommodate the new LNG plant being built near town.  We kept going on to Exmouth which was a long day of 540km but with only two roadhouses in between was an easy drive.  Exmouth has a different feel about it as soon as you enter town.  The town is halfway back up the cape with a range up the middle and the gulf visible to the east for a lot of the drive.  The road west from the main highway goes through some very dry country with deep rich red sand dunes and scrubby bushes making it look very desert like.  The entire cape is best described as desert with very dry rocky or sandy country always backed by the range which is an upthrust limestone ridge.  On the southern edge of town there is a new flash marina and canal development.  It has large deep water canals with wharf moorings and small lockup sheds behind each house block.  The houses being built are also impressive and not your average 3X1 box.  The town is much more touristy like Broome and quite comfortable with good caravan parks, most services and plenty of resorts.  

Deep water canals in the desert. Cute little colored sheds under the stairs.

We had the car and van serviced and were happy with both.  The van park we stayed in backs onto bushland and emus have the run of the park.  Our first evening was entertaining with some young backpackers sitting down to a drink and a packet of crackers that were exactly to the emus liking.  There was much squealing and backing away from the emus that marched up and took the whole box of bickies out of their hands.  They are very inquisitive but just assertive not aggressive as you can walk up and take the bickies back and they wander off looking for their next victims. 

Friendly Emu

Checking the washing and whats for smoko.

Being at the western edge of Australia, the Defence Force presence is clear.  There are 2 airstrips; one an Air Force Base and the other public.  There is also a major Naval Communications Base at the tip of the Cape with the largest Low Frequency radio transmitter in the World installed there.  The Transmitter is made up of 13 towers all over 1,000ft (300 to 385m) high placed in a star shape 2.5km’s across and with a transmitter operating at 1Mw usually with a 2Mw maximum output.  It is pretty impressive and hard to judge the size till you drive towards it for several kilometres and realise that the road to the beach goes under the guy wires supporting one of the towers and you still don’t get close to them.  

On lighthouse point at the northern tip of the cap

RAN Communication Towers 5 of 13

HMS Mildura Anchor ship wrecked nearby in a cyclone

Original WW2 bagged anti aircraft emplacement

We went for our first swim at the beach beside the towers which is right at the tip of the cape but on the eastern (gulf) side.  The water was amazingly clear with gentle waves.  The range that runs up the cape ends right at the northern end and has the usual lighthouse that was installed and working until the Navy Comms Towers were built.  There is now a light on one of the towers that is visible for 58kms out to sea.  We took a drive to look at a couple of canyons (dry gorges) cut into the range south of town.  

Charles Knife Gorge looking SE to gulf coast

Shothole Canyon

They give great views to the east over the coastline and through the canyons.  The colours of the cliffs and stark white gums against a blue sky is pretty.  In the 1950’s the WA Govt drilled for oil along the cape and discovered oil in its first holes but none in the next seven so drilling was abandoned.  I tried once more to capture a feed of fish from the Learmonth Jetty but alas caught only small ones. Of course the other fishers that were there had caught a queen fish and a Spanish mackerel off the same pier 2 days earlier.  As I walked off the pier though, a large dolphin swam right underneath the jetty as if to prove that there were large fish around.

We stocked up with groceries and headed around to the western side of the cape into Cape Range National Park.  The camp sites here are right on the beach behind the first dunes.  There is little shade and the wind was strong for our 3 days there.  We were not disappointed though as most of the other campers had been there for weeks and had experienced strong winds every day.  There are toilets and generators are allowed (contrary to what the Information Centre in town says) and it was a beautiful spot.  The Ningaloo Reef is off the west coast of the entire cape and the scenery is spectacular with huge breakers on the reef several hundred metres off the shore and gentle waves inshore.  There is coral and weed beds right into the shore and the tides at this of year only vary by less than a metre.  The water  is as clear as any I have seen with at least 20m of visibility at Torquise Bay and heaps to see.  There are strong currents which help because use walk up to one end of the beach, walk and paddle out 20m and then drift along the coral for about 15 minutes before paddling back to shore for the walk back along the beach.  The coral has some beautiful colours in it but the best coloured coral is in the main reef further off shore and needing a tinnie to get to.  Every snorkel drift is different with hundreds or thousands of different fish around the coral or just following you as you drift.  We saw plenty of beautiful angel fish, tiny bright blue and yellow fish and heaps of larger snapper, emperor, perch and several rays including a pretty blue spot one.  The highlight was watching a black tipped reef shark swim around us (at least 1.5m long) and the next day saw a 2.5m Gwabegong Shark laying peacefully on the sandy bottom beside a beautiful purple coral bomby.  He(she) wasn’t bothered by the snorkelers as we all swam within a couple of metres of it and it only moved twice in a couple of hours.  It was really pretty with soft spotty skin.  We were not concerned with it as it was surrounded by hundreds of fish from tiny bright ones to 400cm bream, snapper and parrot fish.  We purchased Carol a new snorkel outfit and she enjoyed Torquose Bay immensely.  The current and drifting made it so easy just floating along over the corals.  My favorite were the bombies that looked like snow covered round pine trees which were always full of the smallest but most brightly colored fish. 

New pink snorkelling gear and perfect water

Watching the kite surfers enjoying themselves

It was hard to stay out of the water

Picture perfect beach scenes

Small part of rocky shore line with Ningaloo Reef corals in close to shore

We also drove to the southern end of the park to Yardie Creek which is a large creek that extends more than a kilometre back into the cape into a gorge in the range.  It is currently closed by a sand bar at the mouth which is washed out during cyclones or big rains.  It has been closed for a couple of years now but was open for 3 years following the last cyclone.  Water still seeps in through the sand bar at high tide keeping the creek fresh.  

Along Yardie Creek

Yardie Creek Gorge

At another bay the kite surfers were having a ball with strong winds blowing across a wide bay with only small waves less than a foot high.  It looked like heaps of fun and some of their jumps were metres high.  This is a beautiful place only next time we will bring a tinny and order lighter winds.

We are camped at Ned’s Camp and the ‘volunteer’ hosts are very friendly.  Carl and Bernadette are from Melbourne and have been here since August. They organise a great happy hour with several picnic tables lined up along the beach and most campers in our area along for a chat.  There are some interesting people from French and Danish backpackers to a couple of older blokes who have bought there vans and tinnies here for 28 days and have only managed to get out 4 times in their boats.  Today, Sunday, was calmer early and a couple of boats bought home their bag of 4 big crayfish and one boat had a great morning fishing just inside the reef, catching more than 60 and releasing most.  They still bought home a great feed.  

The 'Happy Hour' drinks always seemed to get disturbed by the sunsets and we were treated to some of the best.

These are natural colours - NO photoshopping here..

50m from the our front door

The colours changed by the minute

This is what beach living is all about!!

We borrowed a Waeco car fridge from Exmouth and our van fridge has not worked better since – go figure!!  A return trip to the fix-it man and we were on our way south again.