During our stay in Karratha, we visited Dampier which is just a short drive out of town. I must say I'm quite impressed with the infrastructure they are doing up there. They are duplicating everything from train lines to roads going to Port Dampier. This is a city that will probably double in size over the next year. I was told that the Hilton hotel chain is going to build a new building starting this year. We ran into a couple that are contemplating moving permanently into Karratha due to the long rotations. They work 28 days on 7 days off. 12 hour days and for a labourer they earn a whopping $165.000 pa. Yep a labourer.

Anyway I'm still travelling as Gabriella wouldn't use a shovel. Both Dampier and Karratha are strange towns with not very much to do. The people who do live here permanently do a lot of fishing and every second house has a boat in the front yard or parked outside because they can't fit up the driveway. The picture above is of a plant called the Sturt desert pea. Timbo we finally found them in Dampier. They were planted right where the Red dog statue was placed. We haven't seen the movie yet but now that we have seen the statue we might get a copy to watch. Neither of these towns did much for us and we were glad to move on to Coral Bay.
After a 560klm drive we arrived early afternoon to a very pretty place. We dropped the van and cruised on down to the beach. It was feeding time for the local fish. This area is a sanctuary for the breeding of species that inhabit the local waters. Well we went down and stood in the shallows of the water and waited for the fish to come. They came and they were spangled emperors. Now these were your everyday small fish, they were between 30-40cm in length and right at our finger tips. Well toes to be precise. This was very annoying as you couldn't fish in these waters and the buggers know were the line is and not to cross. No fish for Rodney. We took some photos but they're stuck on a phone somewhere.

It was a day of nothing as we needed a rest. Cooked some dinner and hit the sack early. Next day we walked around the sand dunes and checked out some fishing spots. I have actually booked another fishing charter for Sunday. This is one that we have seen come back with a lot of fish. The main fish they catch  on these charters are Spangled emperor, red emperor and the odd snapper with other varieties I have never heard of before. SO if I can't catch anything from this trip I'II gladly dump all the fishing gear and take up lawn bowls.

As we had nothing to do today we decided to go whale watching. The boat above which they use to do these trips was great, it was fast and very agile moving through the waves and reef area. We spotted about 12 humpback whales heading north with some of the juveniles from last year. We spotted one which was playing a bit but missed out on getting photos because the boat was on the wrong angle.

This pod of whales were just cruising by with about 5 of them in the group. The size of these beasts (mammals) is incredible. You don't appreciate the size of them until they are close. We came across two that were literally only metres from the boat. They had to stop and kill the engines just in case they got spooked and turned on us.

We raced from one pod to another and in two hours spotted enough whales to keep me going for a while.

No here's one for all the readers. What is Rodney doing in the picture below. Leave your answers by clicking on the comments section below.

Can't wait to see who gets it right.