Bundera on Ningaloo Reef, near Exmouth.

As you can see the fishing here is great. Sandy's biggest fish she has caught in her lifetime, a Golden Trevally at 86cm long. We have had quite a few days of wind so when we can we would go fishing. The new fishing zones will restrict our fishing next time we come here so we have tried fishing at the 50m depth, which is outside the zone. I caught a 60cm Spangled Emperor and we saw a whale jump three quarters of its body length out of the water. It was only 200 metres away from us, I can't describe this magic moment. Unfortunately Sandy wasn't with us but later on she saw a Manta Ray jump clear of the water behind me which I missed, so we both have unique memories from this visit. Squid were caught when it was too windy for snapper so we have enjoyed our time here yet again. No diving this year as the temperature is a bit cool and the wind doesn't help. Lots more sharks this year, mainly reef and bull sharks. We lost a few fish as we were pulling them in with the sharks getting an easy feed.

Using the zoom on my new camera, I caught our local Bush Turkey coming in for a landing. Each year we visit, a pair of Turkeys are in the area.

We packed up camp, said goodbye to everyone and headed off to Karratha for shopping and to meet up with Sandy's Uncle Ross. Set up camp at Cleaverville for 2 nights and if we weren't heading for the goldfields we would have stayed longer, maybe next time. It looks a nice camping, fishing spot and only $6 a night. One of my tyres had started losing pressure so we took the tube out and I went swimming to find the hole. Not sure how it was punctured but I think it was a manufacturing fault.

The next stage took us via Port Hedland to Coongan Pool, just out from Marble Bar. Tried detecting over the next 3 days but no luck. We drove to Marble Bar to find out where the gold is and found a fellow detectorist, Mike, who told us that Tambourah is the place to go.

Visited the Marble Bar, which is composed of Jasper and then Chinaman Pool. We intended doing a bit more sightseeing around the town when we leave the goldfields but found a different route to Port Hedland so they will have to wait until next time we visit.

On the way we passed the Comet Tourist mine (above) then another 100 plus kilometres to where we set up camp. 3 days of detecting until finally on the last day of July I found a 10 gram nugget, hopefully more to come next month.

Till next month.

Peter and Sandy