Snorkelling birthday at Ningaloo Reef

The morning of my 55th birthday started very early, with a drive to the Perth Domestic Terminal for our flight to Exmouth/ Learmonth. There, luggage and I were dropped off, and Richard went off to abandon Jazz (my car) at the long term parking.

The day before, I had a call from Skywest Airlines, to say that we had been bumped from the 7.05 flight to the 11.30 flight. Unhappy with this, we decided to take no notice and showed up for the earlier flight, stomped feet etc, and were allowed seats on what turned out to be a plane "borrowed" from National Jet, really a work bus for the Fly in Fly out workers on offshore platforms and mines. Even the hot water urn didnt work so no airline coffee.

The serendipity continued on our arrival under warm skies at Learmonth Airport: instead of a Hyundai Getz, the rental gave us a roomier red Kia Rio. 32 km later, we were at the Potshot Resort to check on our apartment. Despite being several hours early for check-in, found it was ready and waiting, number 53... my year of birth.

And so started a few wonderful, warm days. Two days were spent drift snorkelling at Turquoise Beach, inside the reef, amongst colourful fish of all sizes. On the third day, a 160 km drive South took us to Coral Bay, where huge corals grow protected just metres fom the beach. it was warm but not hot as it would be up North in the summer, the water temperature just right for wetsuit-free swimming.




For added fun, I took with us Jazz (one of my Blythe girls), and had fun taking funny photos... very silly in my young age, but fun!

















We had some memorable picnics, at Yardie Creek to the south of the Cape Range National Park, and Coral Bay; in the evenings dinner at the Potshot or barbecues at our "apartment"... It was a perfect pre-winter break!