I promise I’ll stop going on about it, but I managed nine
and a half hours sleep last night. It
was bliss! I got straight into my swimming gear today as I was really excited
about the prospect of visiting Hamelin Bay.
The bay is a protected area for various species of Rays and they are
used to human interaction, choosing to swim right up into the shallows to get a
close look at us. Before you even try to
find a ray, you get blown away by the beauty of this bay as soon as you’ve
walked across the sand dunes. Initially we were worried that the rays
would be a ‘no show’ today. The water
was absolutely freezing cold but Simon and I braved it, taking it in turns with
the camera and snorkel gear to search under the water. Simon found a shy sting ray hidden under the
sand but he cleared off as soon as we started trying to film him.
 |
| Simon disappearing into the blue in search of rays.... |
Luckily, other rays were not as shy and
started swimming right up to the beach. It turned out that the visibility was better
when you watched them above the water than below. We managed to get up close and personal without
suffering any Steve Irwin related mishaps!
We spent a couple of hours at the beach before heading north
towards Margaret River. A few of our
Perth friends had raved about the area but we arrived in the town not really
knowing what to see. The Visitors Centre
directed us to a nearby brewhouse and gave us the details for a dive
company further up the coast who might be able to get us that wreck dive we
were after. We couldn’t get a response
over the phone at the dive shop so decided to head straight there as we were
limited for time. After spending about
half an hour looking for the address of Cape Dive it became clear why they
hadn’t answered the phone. They had gone
out of business. This searching about
was ruining my plans for a lazy afternoon on the beach! The owner of a fishing shop helped us out
with the name of a dive company in the next town along, Busselton. We were heading there anyway because Lisa had
recommended visiting the jetty which has an underwater viewing
observatory. So off we went again to the
Dive Shed. Sadly, they are not diving
the wreck tomorrow but instead we could either dive off the jetty with them, or
save ourselves a bit of cash just by the two of us diving it
together. The downside of that being
that we’d still have to pay for hiring the equipment and then putting it in a
trolley to wheel it to the end of the jetty ourselves! But it sounds like there is a lot to see and
it may suit us to do a shallow, easy dive to get back into the swing of
things. But that was for tomorrow.
We took the recommendation of the girl in the dive shop and
checked in to Kookaburra Campsite just round the corner from them, for $41.50
for the night, our priciest campsite yet.
But that meant electricity, hot showers and fully functioning toilets
only two minutes’ walk away from the beach, so not too bad really. In fact, we just had enough time to benefit
from being so close to the beach and enjoyed a swim as the sun began to lower
in the sky. I love a day like this with
so much of it spent in or near the ocean.
No comments:
Post a Comment