This morning’s alarm I seemed to stay awake all night waiting for. At 630 Karen messaged to say she’d checked out the water conditions and we were all good to go. So then it was a frenzy of pumping up kayaks, packing dry bags and squashing ourselves into wetsuits to get out on the water just after sunrise at 7.

Then it was around a 1.5km paddle out to the reef where there are a couple of buoys placed to tie kayaks off.

We jumped into the water and were instantaneously engulfed in the unbelievable quantity of fish swimming on the reef. I’ve never seen anything like it. Even though the coral here was clearly bleached, there were more areas with colour than we have seen so far, which is encouraging. I am not good at all at underwater photography, but have included a few samples anyway. Karen also spotted a small reef shark as well as a turtle sheltering under some coral.

All too quickly it was time to re board the kayaks so the Scott’s could get back to the van and leave their site by 10am. The big test for me was coming up – getting myself into the kayak in the middle of the ocean. Well I felt like a snowboarder getting air on a half pipe! I propelled myself out and landed on the kayak no problem at all. Manoeuvring myself once I was laying belly down across the thing was another story, but in the end it went pretty well 🙂 .

The wind had picked up quite a bit by this stage so it was more effort to get back than the way out, but overall very manageable for kayaking novices like Bob and me. I think we’ll be game enough to go out and try again without the Scott’s in the coming days.

After some down time and a well deserved breakfast, we said goodbye to Karen and Kieran for the next few days as they moved further south to their camp for the next few nights at North Lefroy. I have no doubt Bob would not have appreciated towing a van through sand to get to the camp site – luckily Kieran was up for it and their home for the next few days looks amazing!

Meanwhile the Allen’s have ridden bikes and fished before meeting up with us this afternoon to hike Yardie Creek Gorge (the Scott’s knocked this one over on their way to their new campsite this morning).

We saw rock wallabies along the hike (when we could look up as some sections were particularly steep).

A relaxing evening watching a really colourful sunset before we hit repeat again for tomorrow.