Today we woke to the gentle sound of the waves on the shore. The wind wasn’t anything like yesterday so it was explore time. Karen had criss crossed the whole place and was about to head out and find the location for Sea Lion spotting by the time Bob and I were out of bed. The Allen’s had explored to the south as well. Once we’d shaken out the cobwebs we went for a walk along the beach to the north. We are keen to potentially do some snorkelling here over the next couple of days.

We headed back to the van and Bob embarked on an exercise to get the knobbly tyres we bought for my bike back in Karratha fitted. After lunch, Karen had gotten the low down on the place to see Australian Sea Lions from a local, so we all decided a kayak to Sandland Island was required. The most logical method was to get the kayaks to shore about 3.5km from camp and head out a kilometre from there. So Kieran very kindly drove with all the kayaks (bar Jase’s) while the rest of us rode (and I tried out my new sand worthy tyres). Jason not only rode but carried his kayak on his back!

We arrived and proceeded to pump up the inflatable kayaks. Kings should pay us for the advertising at this point as there were 6 of us all on the identical kayaks 🙂 .

Then we headed out in reasonably calm waters to see what we could find. The Australian Sea Lion is one of the rarest sea lions in the world. It is only found in WA and SA and only 25 pups are born per year in WA. There are very strict approach rules and as we approached Sandland Island it was apparent that there was video surveillance on the island. We spotted a small group of them frolicking in the water and spent a half an hour or so observing. Hard to get photos as we had to maintain our distance, but still very cool.

We headed back to shore, deflated and packed up the kayaks and rode back to camp. We enjoyed sunset on top of the dunes in front of the vans before retreating for the evening. Tomorrow we plan to explore further afield. It’s been a lovely day.