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| View across
Ningaloo Reef from Cape Range National
Park |
Coral Bay (including Ningaloo Marine Park
and Point Cloates)
Quiet holiday resort town south of Exmouth
Located 234 km north of Carnarvon, 154 km south
of Exmouth and 1131 km north of Perth, Coral Bay
is a small holiday resort for people wishing to
avoid the more conventional tourist
destinations. It is really nothing more than a
couple of caravan parks, holiday homes for
fishermen, and a few basic facilities to ensure
that visitors do not have to make the 143 km
journey to Exmouth every time they want a loaf
of bread or a tub of ice cream.
The town's great appeal is its access to the
260 km Ningaloo Reef which lies close to the
shore and forms a kind of natural lagoon which
is ideal for people wishing to fish (although
the waters of Coral Bay itself are a sanctuary
area and 'no fishing' regulations apply),
snorkel, scuba dive or explore the reef.
Lying just north of the Tropic of Capricorn
(i.e. it is Western Australia's equivalent to
Rockhampton) the waters are warm for most of the
year and the beaches, like most of the beaches
on the Western Australian coast, are white and
hard and beautifully clean.
The increasing popularity of Coral Bay (like
so many magical places in Australia its
conversion from secret hideaway to popular
resort occurred all too quickly) has meant a
great pressure on the limited accommodation and
it is advisable to book as far ahead as
possible.
Coral Bay lies at the southern end of the
Ningaloo Marine Park which runs along the coast
from Amherst Point (50 km to the south) to
Bundegi on North West Cape just north of
Exmouth. It includes all the coastline of the
Cape Range National Park (see Exmouth) as well
as Point Cloates.
Things to see:
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Ningaloo Marine Park
The Marine Park offers visitors a rare
opportunity to inspect the reef and its fauna at
close quarters. It stretches south along 260 km
of coastline from Bundegi Beach, near
Exmouth. At points the reef is no more than
100 metres from the shore and its waters are
home to such spectacular creatures as the huge
whale shark, the humpback whale, green turtles,
dolphins and dugongs.
The Marine Park was declared in 1987 in an
attempt to protect Western Australia's largest
coral reef and to control public access to it.
It is a unique area because the reef is so close
to the dry landmass and because it is here that
the Australian continent is closest to the
continental shelf. The reef boasts 170 hard
corals, 11 soft corals and 475 species of fish.
In its own way it is as good as the Great
Barrier Reef and it is much more accessible.
Both the Peoples Caravan Park and Bayview
Holiday Village have glass bottom boat tours
available.
Point Cloates
Point Cloates was, unusually, named by Flemish
sailors who visited the Western Australian coast
in 1719. The Flemish mariner Captain Nash,
sailing from Ostend in Belgium, sighted what he
took to be an island. In his journal he wrote:
'This island cannot be seen far even in clear
weather and NE by E and SW by S about thirty-two
leagues in length with terrible breakers from
each end running about three miles into the
sea.' He named the island after Baron Cloates, a
Flemish aristocrat who was part owner of his
ship. It was subsequently renamed Point Cloates,
is now part of Ningaloo Station, and was
established as a whaling station in 1912. By the
mid-1920s over 1000 whales per annum were being
caught and processed. It was, like so many
places on the Pilbara coast, destroyed by a
cyclone in 1945. Opened again in 1949 it was
closed again in 1963 when a worldwide
environmental push made governments aware of the
dangers whaling posed to the ever-decreasing
population of humpback whales.
Point Cloates can be reached by 4WD vehicles
travelling along the coast road which runs from
Cape Range National Park to Coral Bay. The
wrecks of the Zvir, Fin, Perth and Rapid all lie
on the reef just off Point Cloates.
