For our last day in Exmouth, we had dinner at Mantaray's restaurant which overlooks a beautiful pond, and has the perfect view for the sunset over the beach. I really felt like fish and chips, but thought I should order something a bit fancier, so you can imagine my lack of huge dissapointment when the Red Emperor dish was sold out and I had to get the best fish and chips of my life!
That night we woke up to a strange rustling noise; well, I woke up to it and startled Andrew awake, and he agreed it begged investigating. We isolated the noise to the shopping bags we had lined up that had our (sealed) food in them, and Andrew bravely asked me to stand back while he looked to see what it was. It was a little field mouse! It was SO cute and bouncy, and we managed to help it get out of the bag outside. I was imagining all sorts of worst case scenarios (outback tarantula was a possibility, although I did think it was most likely a lizard), and was so happy when it was the cutest little mouse.
After all the excitement, we managed to get some sleep before an early start to watch the sunrise over the water in the East in WA (still blows my mind), and listen a little more to the beautiful birds which sounded like someone whistling a slow sad song.
We got back on the road and stopped in Coral Bay to hire a kayak and do some more snorkelling. Even after Turquoise Bay I underestimated how amazing it would be; the reef was so dense with lots of different types of coral that looked like huge cabbages (or as Andrew pointed out, also kind of like the Last Of Us version of Cordyceps), and so many different types of fish. We kayaked out to two of the buoys and investigated there, then also wandered into the shallow part where the reef started close in. We swam with a school of translucent fish, saw some huge and brilliantly coloured fish (Andrew described one as looking like a rainbow paddlepop) and each of us made a friend black-and-white fish which were super friendly and followed us around. The water was so warm too, I think I've been way too spoiled now by snorkelling up north and won't be able to lower my standards to anything else!
The next stop was Wooramel River Retreat for a soak in the mineral baths, and some intrepid camping. We got there with plenty of light to spare and managed to put the tent up quite quickly (despite the flies), then made it straight to the warm mineral baths to watch the sunset and the stars. It was beautiful, and it definitely made up for the intrepidness of the camping which was waaayy out of my comfort zone. Wooramel is really an amazing place, but I was just mentally unprepared. The "ablution block" was basically outdoors with a very small amount of light, which was the same for the kitchen camp. We managed to make a really yum dinner despite not having anything to cut the sausages with (which resulted in quite a bit of sausage squishing) and the very basic (but clean!) set up. Andrew was very encouraging and although he laughed at me a lot, made me feel really comfortable about how uncomfortable I was. I think I can handle the "hour of the moth", and the million cicadas (they were everywhere, and sang so loudly and beautifully), but the final straw was that one of the two toilets in the ablution block had a huge dangling spider in it, that I could see from the other toilet. It was definitely the final straw spider! I'm not sure if I'm a "camper" now, but I certainly think I could do it again if there was an indoor toilet situation with an actual light. And just to stress, the place really was incredible, maybe with practice I would have been able to enjoy it without the panic!
We had a very early start this morning to make the 6am dawn service, which Andrew explained was a bit out of the ordinary (the occasional advertisements between the ballads about Anzac day was the tip off) but we enjoyed it a lot due to the amazing sunrise, the dawn chourus from the birds, and the coffee. There were a couple of stop offs on the drive home including the Overlander Roadhouse (which was the best one yet), the Lobster Shack in Cervantes (which is a tourist trap, but we loved it, and also is not to be confused with the Lobbster Trap in Lancelin which is actually more of shack), and a police checkpoint before Yanchep to make sure we actually live in Perth.
Andrew definitely outdid himself again planning another incredible trip, which we managed to still take and enjoy despite the various apocalyptic events surrounding it!
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