Haven't blogged for a few days. The aftermath of 250mm of rain in a day or two in Exmouth has hindered our plans somewhat. The Cape Range National Park and associated camping and snorkelling are completely out of action. The Visitor's Centre and Ranger's houses were flooded and the bush camping areas had caravans floating in a metre of water. The road in and out of the park was closed and our preferred launching platform, the Tantabiddy Boat Ramp, has been completely silted up from the floods. It is out of action except on high tide until they can get some heavy equipment out there and at the moment the Council's priority is the town's facilities that also received considerable flood damage. Pete was due to take his boat to the Honda dealer in Karratha on Monday but didn't get out until 1:00pm on Tuesday when they opened the only road out of Exmouth to the north.
We did manage to get a couple of walks in, one about 2 hours across the top of the range just south of the lighthouse and the other about 3 hours to Potshot Gorge. The latter was particularly spectacular passing by massive gorges in the car on the way and as part of our walk.
One of Brett's mates Tommo, who lives in Exmouth, contacted us and finished up spending the night with us in the park. Tommo has been living here for a couple of years and had some amazing stories of spear fishing, caving and encounters with sharks that kept us entertained for the night.
Next day the wind was dropping thus allowing us to get the boats in the water and with the Bundegi Ramp operational, the decision was made to try and land a couple more Marlin. A few hours of trolling resulted in 3 Mahi Mahi but no billfish.
Fresh Mahi Mahi cooked with Stelleen's secret batter recipe and Peters Greek style chips, finished off the day nicely.