Exmouth and Cape Range

After the day before, yesterday could do nothing but improve. An early start, 7am, saw us on the road to Exmouth, which turned out to be three hours drive away. Straight to the supermarket for a few items, and who should we bump into but the family that we had camped beside in Millstream, Lee and Karen, and their three lovely children. We had decided to go on the Big 4 site, and it just so happened that we were placed next door to them again.
Because we wished to use the car we had decided to erect our ground tent, for only the third time since we had bought it over a year ago. we had fun with it, almost coming to blows over which was the front of it!
So, a great afternoon in the pool, then a pleasant evening with them and another couple who had also been at Millstream.

They were leaving today to go into the Cape Range National Park, just the other side of the peninsula, and we decided to follow them for a couple of days, so we went round there to see where they were. We have been to many beautiful places in Australia, but few to beat this place. While Exmouth itself is nice, small but well planned, as we travelled up the coast and saw the beaches we could see what the attraction is for this area.
Rarely visited until the 1940s, when it became a secret naval and Air Force base, the cape has still that sense of remoteness and tranquillity.
Animal life abounds,  this is the first place for many months that we have seen Big Red kangaroos, and emus just wandering about nonchalantly.
There is even a fox on our site, he wandered past us last night as we were enjoying a drink with our neighbours They are an introduced species, brought in by the colonial gentry in the late 1800s for sport, and like the rabbit have thrived here.









On a communications tower in the park we spotted an Osprey family, both parents were sat observing their two chicks, who were stretching their wings ready for their first flights.
The nest was very intricately built, with some quite big branches, and we marvelled how they could lift them up there to build such a superb construction.

Some of the beaches are also turtle nesting sites, and it is possible to come along at night to see them coming up the beach to lay their eggs at this time of year. Three different turtles visit this beach, and each  lay over 100 at a time, but fewer than one in a thousand reach maturity and return to this beach to lay the next generation.
The seas abound with large creatures, it is possible to swim here with Whalesharks, the largest fish in the world, perfectly harmless as they eat only plankton.
There are also Manta Rays, and Humpback Whales pass by here on the way to their summer in the Antarctic, we are hoping to spot some in the next couple of days.