Coral Bay & the Exmouth Gulf

 If I was better about sending along these life updates, I would remember what information I've told you. But I'm not, so I don't. Today's thing I can't remember sharing or not is about Gisela, my former housemate from Perth! She and I split up when I came to Exmouth and she was headed to Newman, the mining town in the middle of nowhere, to do her regional work. Well girlfriend lasted less than 24 hours in Newman before realizing it was NOT where she wanted to live for three months, hopped in her car and drove to meet me in Exmouth! She decided this place wasn't quite what she wanted either, so she ended up staying in the area, but in the next town over - an hour and a half south of Exy in a town called Coral Bay. She got a job bar tending and has come up twice for visits. A few weeks back I finally returned the favor and made it down there for a visit. I meant to wake up around 6:30 to get an early start, do the day trip, and get back to Exmouth before sunset (kangaroos and dingos on the road make nighttime driving up here dangerous, even with a bull bar on the front of Tessie). Good plan, but my body clock decided that 5:20am was a better idea. So up I got up, fueled up, and watched the sunrise til the roads were bright enough to see. 

 

I got to Coral Bay pretty darned early, so I took advantage of the early hour and free moment to call my friend Megan back home for a catch up. I only made her a teensy bit jealous by showing her the beach I was calling from.

Gisela and I spent the whole day hanging out on the beach with her friends and it was so so good. After all the days of working, a veg day by the sea was perfect. Her friends are so warm and welcoming, and kept asking if I was spending the night. I told them I hadn't planned to but we would see - so obviously I stayed. It was locals night at the bar and there would be live music! Who was I to say no to that? My early morning, plus the long hours in the sun, plus the cozy atmosphere meant that I fell asleep on the couch in the middle of the after party, but, bless them, G's friends just snuggled me into some blankets and left me to it. I keep finding good people wherever I go. 

I had an 11:30am start at work the next day, so I was up and to the bakery pretty early. Got myself some yummy breakfast pies, an apple cream tart, and popped myself back on the road to Exmouth. As I was driving, I saw this majestic Wedge Tailed Eagle hanging out on a termite mound. 

Since I assume Pop lives on in every hawk I see back home, I assume this is just Australian Pop.

Before the recent bad turn of weather (meaning wind. That's all that "bad" weather means around here), Dave, Sandra and I all had a morning off from work and went out fishing in the Gulf. I told them it was my first time going out since I was about 8 years old with Uncle Jim (and the doormat flounder I caught that day!), but I think perhaps going and NOT catching fish is even more fun. You literally just get to float along in the sunshine, watching humpback whales and their calves playing, and every once in a while you jiggle your fishing rod to pretend you're doing something with it. Or that's what I did, anyway. Davo was busy catching tuna. 

David

Mural next to Bundegi Boat Ramp

It's Friday morning, August 28th, and I'm at the start of a few days off work so I can spend time with friends who are coming up for a visit from Perth! Nat & Mick are coming in a camper van they've hired, and Wiebke and Weronika are driving up in a rental car, and I can't WAIT TO SEE THEM!!! I'm going to cook up some dinner for us all tonight, Nat and I are supposed to dive the Navy Pier tomorrow (used to be a Top 10 shore dive site in the world - fingers crossed it happens! The wind reports don't look great though), and Sunday I've told everyone I know in town to stop by the Potshot Pool Bar because I'm going to be celebrating there! It might just end up being me and my crew of regulars from the pub (all men in their 50s and 60s, naturally), but I can't wait!! It's gonna be a good weekend, y'all! 

29 has been a good year, here's to turning 30 :)

It wasn't me

I should know by now how internet sleuthy my amazing family can be. My cousin Sarah and Aunt Mares in Arizona heard the news that one of the tour companies here in Exmouth had an accident - a 29 year old female on a snorkeling tour got caught between a mother humpback whale and her calf and was crushed by them. Lots of broken ribs, internal unjuries, etc. Word is that she's recovering well down in Perth (airlifted), but the news reports didn't mention her name. I should have known to IMMEDIATELY tell my parents that I'm alive, due to being a 29 year old female living in Exmouth and working on said tour boats, but I thought "ah, I don't want to worry them, I'll tell them in a few days." Fast forward 24 hours and I've got several ALL CAPS TEXT MESSAGES FROM MY MOTHER TELLING ME TO CALL HOME NOW. So oops. Anyway, prayers for the woman, but it was NOT me who was crushed. I am safe and happy and uncrushed. Also mostly dry - I didn't go out sharking last week or this week so far. We'll see. Anyway, when M&D requested a new blog post after my very apologetic phone call home, it seemed like giving an update was the least I could do as part of the apologetic groveling I need to do. 

My weekly routine of Tuesdays as my full day off and Sunday working both jobs was shaken up a bit this week. No sharking, as mentioned, and I ended up working 7 days at Potshot last week. We're supposed to be closed for dinner service on Tuesdays, but a snafu with scheduling a bus tour meant that we were gonna have 30 people who needed dinner showing up and we had to make it happen. So I worked dinner yesterday, got to hang out with the pensioners on the bus tour at the bar, and then hung out with my coworkers after work for a bit. The 7-days on was made MUCH easier by the fact that I was only on evening shifts for most of the week - Friday was my only split. So that meant that  when my brother shot me a casual hello text while I was reading in the porch hammock a few days ago, I was free to just pick up and call him for a catch up! It continues to blow my mind that even thousands of miles of distance between us doesn't make it impossible to commiserate and catch up. Technology has its downsides, but I sure do appreciate the upsides. It's a far cry from Dad's multiple week turnaround time of letter writing when he was in the Peace Corps!

I'm (as usual) at the Visitor's Center writing this missive, but the WiFi is overwhelmed by all the tourists. I need to get here earlier in the morning if I want my internet connection to be uninterrupted. I had all these plans to show you photos of my sunrise adventure from a week or two ago, but the photos won't upload. I'll figure it out. 

Anyway, so I decided I really needed to get up for a sunrise one of these days. I'm up for it on the days I go sharking, but I'm busy working so I can't take the time to properly appreciate it. I'm running to the bakery for food stuffs, packing the bus, collecting tourists, whatever. So on a day off a couple of weeks back I decided to give it a whirl. Now anyone who has met me in the early morning knows that I struggle with relinquishing sleep. I NEED sleep or I turn into a not-nice person. And, despite my best intentions, I frequently snooze alarms that are meant to get me up-and-at-'em for fun stuff (work stuff I just suffer through the indignity of an alarm). But I shocked myself by actually heeding the alarm and getting out of bed for an adventure! I planned to go watch the sunrise at the lighthouse near the tip of the peninsula, but as I drove, the pre-dawn beauty convinced me I needed to stop driving sooner rather than later and get to the beach so I could watch it. So I nipped down a little side dirt road and headed for the beach in my car. Which was cool until the sand got rapidly deeper and I wasn't yet in 4 wheel drive and got myself stuck. Which wasn't ideal because I really wanted to watch the sunrise and there were still dunes in my way. So I stubborned my way out of the hole and carried on. And then got properly bogged (NB: if I had actual experience doing 4WD stuff I would probably not be considered bogged. But that's semantics because I was by myself. So.). I was close enough to the water at that point that I just left my hazards flashing and walked myself the last 30 yards to the water. It was spectacular. So worth waking up for. 

Lightly stuck Tessie

Turtle hatchling tracks

Once the sun was well and truly up, I needed to un-bog. 45 minutes of back and forth over the sand compacting it, letting my tire pressure down, and very patiently convincing Tessie that we needed to make it happen, and I was out! I thought to head back to the main road to town but then saw another side track road and thought why not? My tires already needed re-filling, so may as well use them! So instead, I nipped my way back to town by driving along the beach! It was about 8am by that point and I didn't see another soul. I had considered driving over to the west side of the peninsula and the beaches there because the wind and swell were both going to be down - ideal conditions for a beach day - so I had my bathing suit with me and figured I might as well put it to good use! Parked up in the sand, headed down to the water and was halfway in when my inner nudist said "why get the suit all wet unnecessarily?" And obviously I listened. So I'm swimming about in all my naked, solo glory when I think "Mom will totally appreciate this." So I called her up (close enough to town at that point to have cell service) and showed her the beach and bragged about how brilliant I am, taking advantage of a deserted beach to go for a swim, and how I haven't seen another soul when I SEE A CAR DRIVING UP THE BEACH AT ME. So I had to sprint to the car, Mom cackling at me, to grab my towel and get covered up. The guy waved as he went by and definitely was on to me, but thank goodness he just kept going. Oy.

Beach "road"

Pelicans

Morning sprint distance

Treated myself to breakfast at a cafe in town, re-filled my tires, went for a haircut, and then off to the west side for beaching. Davo (my housemate) recommended staying at one of the beaches further north on the peninsula as there would probably be fewer tourists. So I rocked up to the second one I came to (first one is a popular surf beach, so I knew it'd be packed) and got myself parked. Only after parking did I notice the signs saying it's a nude beach. So anyway, that's how I ended up naked on two separate beaches on the same day in Exmouth! As Davo is fond of saying, all the normal people are in Perth, Exmouth is where all the weirdos live. So I guess count me among them!

This week has been crappy weather (VERY windy, some rain) which has been perfect for feeling content staying home and reading every day before going in to work. This is what I look like 70% of the time when I'm not at work:

This is what I look like the other 30% of the time:

I keep pinching myself, but apparently this is where I actually live