Coral Bay, September 1997

Next stop was a place called Coral Bay. It's situated at the southerly end of the Ningaloo Reef, the largest fringing coral reef in Australia. There isn't a lot there, just a couple of caravan sites, half a dozen shops and cafes and a pub. Both of the caravan sites had backpackers' hostels too. The one I was staying in was distinctly reminiscent of Prisoner Cell Block H with very small rooms built out of metal surrounding a courtyard. The courtyard was very dirty and certainly wasn't swept in the 4 nights that I stayed there. Fortunately, it wasn't very full, so that I had a twin room to myself the whole time. Fitting two people and their luggage into one room would have been rather cosy.

Coral Bay was the place that I finally managed to go diving. There are two dive shops there. I booked with Coral Dive because they answered the phone when I rang. The other shop had their answerphone on, which isn't much good when you're ringing from a call box.

I booked two days diving and it cost $100 a day. The full price was $110, but I got a discount because I had my own regs. The boat was a fairly new catamaran. Only four of us turned up on the first day, so it wasn't exactly crowded. We had to be at the shop at 8.15am, though it then took about an hour and a half before the boat finally got around to leaving.

We didn't go out very far, just to the inside of the reef. You could almost have done it as a shore dive. The first site was called Asho's Gap. We were given no dive brief at all other than that it was "that bommie there". So we jumped in and the water was not very warm. I'd been assured that a 3mm wetsuit would be fine. They didn't have much else in the shop anyway, but the temperature was around 22C, so it really took my breath away.

The maximum depth of the site was 10m. The coral was quite pretty but there wasn't much in the way of tropical fish about. Coral Bay is a mecca for fishermen, and we did see schools of snapper, barracuda and some big grouper. I wasn't that impressed, and neither was the Swiss guy I was diving with. The second dive was called Lottie's Lagoon. It was much the same, though even shallower with a maximum depth of 8.6m. You could have easily snorkelled the site as our average depth was about 6m. There were a lot of batfish about as well as a large stingray and a squid, but again it wasn't that great a dive.

The next day we had to be there by 8.30am. The boat didn't leave the beach until 10.05am, which I thought was ridiculous. The guy who ran the shop was diving that day, because there were only three customers. The first dive of the day was Asho's Gap again. I was diving with an Aussie who confessed he didn't dive that much and had only done his OW. The warning bells should have started to go off.

In the water, my buddy hurtled off into the distance. It was a bit of a struggle to keep up because, every time I tried to look at something, he'd gone off even further. So naturally we hardly saw anything at all except some trevally and angelfish. When we surfaced we were miles from the boat. This was a complete surprise to my buddy, though less of one to me, as he'd consistently swum north or west for the entire dive. It took just under 15 minutes to get back to the boat. They didn't come and get us. We were the only divers in the water, so it wasn't like they had anything else to do. Back on the boat, my buddy revealed that he still had 80 bar left, but had got bored. Since I had about the same, there was no reason why we couldn't have made our way back to the boat underwater at a reasonable leisurely pace. Sometimes you really feel like killing some people, don't you?

The instructor was having problems with his ears, so we went down as a three for the second dive. The site was surprise, surprise, Lottie's Lagoon again. The Aussie had promised not to wander off again and the German woman who came with us had only just done her first dive in a year, so she was a bit on the nervous side. The instructor started to set my kit up for the next dive, which was a real novelty for me, though he didn't have a clue how to put my Apeks first stage on. Turret first stages aren't that uncommon, though I'd already watched him put his wetsuit on the wrong way round, so it wasn't a great surprise.

The dive was nothing special again and in about 6m of water. We did see a small blue spotted stingray, but that was about as exciting as it got. Well apart from when my mask fell off because my cylinder was too high on my back and the first stage had knocked the strap off. Still it did teach me never to let anyone set my gear up for me again and reminded me why no-one uses aluminium cylinders in the UK. After the previous dive I did the navigation, so there was no surface swim at the end. After all, in 15m viz, navigation isn't very hard, is it?

After two indifferent days of diving, I was quite keen to see if I could get out to the outer reef, which I thought might be a bit more interesting. Coral Dive couldn't help me because the guy was on his own as his partner had been called away to Perth. Otherwise he said he might have been able to do something. Part of the problem is that most of the divers they get there have just done their OW in Queensland, so they're very reluctant to take them anywhere that's even a little bit deep. The other shop couldn't help me out either. Coral Dive can be reached on (08) 9942 5940. Ningaloo Reef Dive are on (08) 9942 5824.

Later I got talking to a guy in a pub in Exmouth who used to work on a boat in Coral Bay. He told me that there were a couple of really good dive sites there. One was called "The Gap" and was a large brain coral that was a shark cleaning station. The other one was called the "S Bends". So they might be worth a look. The sites I went to weren't that good. Going with the other shop wouldn't have made much difference because we saw them out there at much the same sites as us, though they did seem to arrive on site somewhat earlier than we did.

Coral Bay is a good place to visit though. It's got a nice beach, which stretches for miles and is practically deserted. There were about 3 places to get a reasonable meal in the evenings, and the pub's quite good. Because the place is full of holiday makers, most people used to go down there of an evening and the people there were quite friendly. It was well worth staying there 4 nights, after which I headed north to Exmouth.

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