The North West Cape

Tuesday 9th June
This morning, at Coral Bay, I washed my hands on one of the many bore water garden taps and found the temperature to be somewhere between 40 - 50°C, almost too hot for hands. The sprinklers for the grass are dispersing the water into small droplets which cool on their way down so as to not burn the grass when they reach it!
We got away from Coral Bay by 9am and headed 150km north to Exmouth where we arrived before 11am. This was our shortest travelling day so far.
The caravan park that was recommended to us is 17km out of town, on the way to Cape Range National Park, just under the old Lighthouse. From the vantage point of the Lighthouse one can really see the green oasis of the Caravan Park below (see picture) nestled behind the sand dune. As most non-town parks this one is also on bore water and has limited drinking water on specially marked, non dripping, push style taps only.
There is also no phone reception at the caravan park, but the hill with the Lighthouse, just behind the caravan park provides very good reception.
After setting up the caravan and feeding the hungry kids we headed into Exmouth township but there really isn't much to see, actually, we found it rather unattractive as it is set way back from the foreshore and doesn't have much to offer. However, the bakery has very nice Muffins and various other produce.
We checked out Town Beach and the Port and even stumbled across the Yacht Club and the Cemetery.
The most impressive feature of the town, to be precise North of town, is the Navy Submarine communications installation. It is made up of an array of 16 towers the highest 1200 feet (400mt). The installation can be seen from a distance of 30km or more and uses many miles of steel wire to hold it all down during cyclone season.
Another noteworthy observation are the commercial wind generators, found on the hills surrounding the towns in this region, which are designed to be lowered via a winch/pulley arrangement during cyclones so they don't get ripped out of the ground.
The other large tax payer owned infrastructure in the area is the Learmonth RAAF base to the south of Exmouth, a rather large airfield with many unused hangers and a civil airport attached.
Later in the arvo we went out to the tip of Nor-West Cape, the most Nor-Westerly point on Mainland Australia, where the wreck of the SS Mildura rises out of the water. Today we got a really good look at it since the tide was one of the lowest. The Mildura ran aground on the reef in 1907, no lives were lost but over 400 bullocks went into the drink.
We also timed the visit so we could another one of those beautiful sunsets (see picture).
Tomorrow we're going to visit Cape Range National Park on Ningaloo Reef which is the main attraction of the area and pretty spectacular by all reports.