Shell Beach , Coral Bay

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We left Monkey Mia early Thursday morning as we had a big drive ahead as we were aiming for Coral Bay.

But we stopped off at Shell Beach before we left the wilderness area around Monkey Mia.

We arrived in time to see this stunning sunrise

As the name indicates shell beach is totally made up of shells, not just any shells , but tiny shells from the Fragum cockle, they beleive in some areas on the beach the shells are up to 10 metres deep.

So why is this beach covered in this one type of shell, well due to a number of factors the bay of shell beach is twice as salty at the sea. This has lead to a lack of competition and predators for the fragum cockle. Sadly it was way too cold to have a swim and test the easier to float theory about super salty water


 The road to Coral Bay was pretty much a lot of what the  image above shows , i vigilantly watched for flocks of goats on the roadside, whilst continuing to work on knitting a pair of socks for Gadget. We did pass through Carnarvon , stopping for fuel, and seen all the fruit trees.

We arrived mid afternoon at Coral Bay, what a lovely spot. There is so many tourists here and i can see why. Again the Indian Oceans azure waters and the water temperature is actually pretty good.

Coral bay is bordered by the amazing Ningaloo reef , home to 300 species of coral , 500 different species of fish and a constant population of Manta Rays. You can also do whale shark tours , and at the right time of the year humpback whale tours. 

We enjoyed watching the sunset over the ocean

And met our little friend above along with her wallaby on the walk back..


This morning we jumped aboard the Ningaloo ( boat) for the reef and manta ray snorkelling  tour 

I will admit that I was more than a bit worried about the water temperature, after all it was only a week ago we were in jeans, jumpers and beanies, but we were provided with wetsuits, which quite a few people chose not to wear. Anyway the water temperature was great and the water clarity 


Well you can see from the images , the water clarity was fabulous over the reef. We seen schools of all sorts of fish and the coral was just amazing , I could have snorkelled there for hours.

We also had the opportunity to see reef sharks , (image below) initially I was a bit anxious , but there were about half a dozen of these guys and they seemed much more concerned about us than we were of them. Some of the coral was just amazing , sadly my camera doesn’t have a water proof  cover so all the images will have to live in my head.

But we are extremely lucky that gadget had his GoPro and he was able to catch some really good footage.

Part of the tour was swimming with manta rays , these absolutely elegant creatures were just amazing, as you can see the water clarity wasn’t quite as good, but again the memories in my mind are just amazing. All up it was a fantastic tour and we had an amazing morning .

Sadly tomorrow we move on again

Until the next blog

Travel safe

The Touring Knights


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