Teach the wife to fish…

…and her fingers end up smelling of fish? 

sorry 😉

We spent the day out fishing with Ian and Jenni (the other ones) up at Exmouth – we had intended to head across to the Murion islands, but the weather was a bit rough (to put it mildly)

We pulled off to the sea just north of the big Navy VLF grid at Exmouth and started trolling – dragging rods through the water as the boat moved.

We caught a decent sized Mackerel – as my first experience of seeing a fish bigger than a trout being pulled from the water, I was quite surprised at the fight it put up – not that much of a shock really, considering that the next thing to happen was a spike to the head and it’s gills cut out. yowch.

After a while, Ian reckoned he had found a good area for bottom fishing – so we pulled up to a halt, and dropped some baited lines to the bottom – I got a bite instantly! two actually:

fish

Jen then went on to catch another snapper herself – but by this point our camera was acting up.

It was a brilliant day – we saw a couple of giant turtles swimming past the boat, and had a great time. Once back on land we scaled the fish and Jenni cooked them on the Barbie – delicious.

The little ute that could…

Well,  the old ute has done us proud – all the way from Perth to Exmouth with only some minor niggles.

We got prepped and ready at 5am – a truly awful time to be up and about, to be honest, as the sun wasn’t even up.

Ute Prep at 5am

We got all of our prep finished, checked the straps on the Kayaks one last time and headed off.

The drive is just over 1500km (900 miles), so we took it in turns to drive (apart from Mark, who is still unable to drive like a self sufficient adult…). Even with the breaks and turns, driving for 14 hours straight is pretty tiring – something the local police know only too well:

Targetting Fatigue

it was worth it though – . we were treated to an amazing spectacle.

As we drove out onto the cape range, the sun was setting on the west – and as the sun was setting, the moon was rising into a sky that was absolutely alive with light – blues, purples.. it was pretty magical.

The pictures don’t catch the half of how amazing this looks, but hopefully give a bit of an idea:

sunset over the cape range

moonrise

About 12 hours in, everyone in the car (apart from Jen, naturally) started sniffing and asked ‘can you smell burning?’ We could, and it was – rubber burning.

We couldn’t see anything under the hood, but the problem became clear when we tried to turn into the next roadhouse for fuel – the power steering had failed!  Thankfully, the car was fine to drive without it, just a little heavy.

Up on the cape, the roads are basically straight. well… ‘roads’ is a bit generous..

roads

Still, despite the road conditions, despite the power steering, despite being driven for hundreds of miles… the ute delivered us in one piece to turqoise bay:

ute2

Not a bad purchase!

This diem has been well and truly carpe’d

Bit of a gap – Alan and Penny went home, and Helen arrived.

Yesterday, we had the epic aussie road trip ™ and drove from Joondalup all the way north to Exmouth – around 1400km in one day. We set off about 5.40am with the first glimmers of dawn, and drove until 7.30pm, an hour after sunset – incredible.

We met up with the other Ian and Jenni (who arrived the day before yesterday), got some to tips on places to go and booted off into the blue –  Today we settled into the Ningaloo Maine park – Jen and I holding hands underwater as we snorkelled over a coral reef teeming with life..

An amazing experience, and one that lasted for huge chunks of the day.

After that, we got showered/changed and went for a drive through the park after dark – looking to snag the perfect roo picture… (to follow – we are on super slow internet via phone just now!!)

That and downloading the apprentice to watch when we get back to Perth… we may even have to do a back to back 2 week session!