Day 77 | Ningaloo Beach Resort: if it's an upmarket backpackers why are those showers briny
rest day
Wow.
I mean, really, WOW!
Coral Bay, hunh?
As far as Australia goes this is as good as it gets.
Well, for this lonesome, trans-Australia, bike pedaller.
I guess the key is an impressive range of natural features combined with distance: it’s hard to get to, a long way from not much, and even if it’s over run by travellers, it’s not exactly overwhelmed. Too far away and it’s just so clean. What I mean by that is it’s too far away for bogans, (the Aussie rednecks), who find it easier, and probably cheaper, to access Bali, or Thailand, so just the local Grey Nomads and the younger European travellers in their Wicked vans congregate.
Might not be Australia’s best beach, there’s enough of them around, let’s just rate it 99%, the sand is slightly off a pure, squeaky white, I’ll knock a mark off for that.
The water is only 21°C.
The accessible coral, in the water immediately off the beach, is a little sad.
But you sense I quibble, it really is the full package.
Massive waves hammer noiselessly out on the reef, maybe a kilometre out to sea, the white foam dominating a few glass bottomed boats, sagging with the non-snorkelers, that cruise in the calmer waters, near the smudgy, waving, evolving line of snow white separating the dark, ridiculously turquoise water from the pale ethereal, umm, air. (Maybe it’s me that’s overwhelmed.)
There are large proportions of Grey Nomads, and some of them larger than large, standing by the water’s edge, suspiciously, a clipped white moustache, or three, beer belly compulsory, etc, watching shadows of big fish a couple of metres offshore, apparently they are tame, fed each sunset for those travellers frightened by water more than toe deep.
Somehow it all seems analogous to travelling 1000km to a pub, and then milling around outside. Get in there team! Immerse yourself in a whole new world. You won’t die.
Well, there’s always the glass bottomed boat, that’s almost like being there, or watching the fish on TV.
I plunge in, having discovered yesterday in my first dip that there is a strong current, ie, you flop in and drift effortlessly over the bottom, at quite some pace, little flapping of the feet required.
OK, there’s little hard coral close in but there’s plenty of the soft types with its own particular beauty, sort of like a wild, irradiated cabbage, grown to monumental size, but as part of the radiation effect, turned brown. Actually like giant brown roses, no, carnations, in full bloom, petals waving slightly in the current.
Scattered around are huge brain corals, with each brain being picked by stray fish of assorted size and colour.
But of course the real delight is not the vegetarian persuasion, it’s the fish: myriad types in perplexing quantities, all lackadaisical, hanging around like teenagers at the mall, waiting for something to happen, clouds of little iridescent blues, coral trout with their blue netting colouring, angel fish, 600mm transparent garfish, built like the traditional Roman spear, and, most surprising is the curiosity and tameness of the huge eyed snapper, that swim right up to my mask, staring at me, for some reason my hands quickly moving to protect my, umm, midriff, you never know what’s going to eventuate when you encounter 20 five, no, eight kilo fish, trained to perform each evening in a feeding frenzy.
It’s warm enough, ie, coolish, to last two 800m beach drifts.
Maybe I didn’t need those preposterously clown sized flippers after all.