Well, all through 2020 people were hoping 2021 would see the end of Covid and life would go back to normal, with overseas trips back on the agenda.

Well we all know how that turned out. So now it's June 2021 and Julie and I are off on another adventure here in Australia. This time we are not restricted to WA and plan on visiting the Northern Territory.

But for this blog we will need to go back to December 2020, Michael's Birthday to be precise. You see, Michael's family bought him a swim with the Whale Sharks off Exmouth, one of those 'bucket list' items one needs to tick off and for good reason, it's awesome!

We started this adventure on the 8th of June, but a week before we departed we welcomed our first grandson, Riven, into the world. He was perfect in every way and both he and mum were doing well when we made our goodbyes a week later.

From Perth we traveled to Geraldton to spend a night with a friend before making our way to Mullewa where we stopped for lunch. From here we headed north through Murchison Settlement.

At Murchison Settlement there was a large sign to advise travellers of which roads are open or closed. We noted that some were closed, but there was no mention of our route to Gascoyne Junction being closed, so we pushed on.

This is a dirt road and due to recent rains it was wet and slippery in places and some of the floodways had water in them. By the time we stopped for the night we had only passed one car and one truck, both heading south. The campsite was also empty, much to our pleasure.

The next morning we continued north to Gascoyne Junction and were not surprised to see the road we were on had been closed from this end. Whoops!

We visited the local shire office to let them know the road wasn't closed from the south and to find out if any of the roads heading north were open. They weren't, so we had no option but to head towards Carnarvan on the bitumen. We did manage to find a spot to get off the road for the night, but only after going down another boggy dirt road.

Because of this change in route, we were a day ahead of ourselves, which meant we would need to find another place to stop on our way to Exmouth. With all the dirt roads closed it was going to be hard to free camp, so we headed into Coral Bay in the hope that we could get into a caravan park.

We hadn't been to Coral Bay before, so we were pleased when we could get a spot for the night and it gave us time in the afternoon to have a look around. We were very pleased with what we found, a lovely seaside town with a great little beach for swimming, or around to the south a bit you can go snorkeling. It was very pleasant.

The next morning we headed into Exmouth and to the caravan park we had booked.