Day 66 Cape Range National Park

Today we drove around the peninsular of Exmouth to Cape Range National Park and went to the end of the road at Yardie Creek. The National Park covers 50,581 hectares of stunning limestone ranges, deep rugged canyons and 50 kilometres of pristine beach. It provides habitat for more than 100 species of land birds, native marsupials and around 630 species of flowering plants.

On the way out of Exmouth we passed Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC), a trilateral military initiative between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom (part of the AUKUS partnership) designed to track objects in deep space. An amazing site of so many satellite dishes.





Yardie Creek is a unique feature of Cape Range National Park as it has a permanent water source that flows between the spectacular sheer cliffs, known as Yardie Creek Gorge. We completed the walks with amazing views of red limestone cliff faces and the rare black-footed wallaby. From the top, the views into the creek and out to the Ningaloo Reef are purely spectacular.













Our next stop was Sandy Bay with its picturesque white sandy beach and turquoise water.






We then moved on to Oyster Stack another snorkelling area.





Our next stop was Turquoise Bay dubbed one of the world’s best beaches, and undoubtably one of the best in Australia, Turquoise Bay is a snorkeller’s paradise. The water is fairly shallow and there are beautiful fishes and coral. The tide was very strong and I struggled with the snorkel - this is not something I have done before, however Kevin was like a fish and swam over the coral seeing all sorts of fish and the largest he said he has ever seen in the water. Unfortunately I don' have an underwater camera.








On the way home we called into the Vlamingh Lighthouse sits on a rise south of the North West Cape and has great views of the Ningaloo Coast. It was erected in 1912 following the SS Mildura getting stuck on a reef at the cape in 1907 with 500 cattle on board, most of which drowned.