We are sad to leave Cape Range National Park and our little camp at Lakeside. The unspoilt, uncrowded beauty and laid-back lazy days are going to be hard to replicate. We wonder, too, how long it will be before this idylic spot will remain undeveloped and commercialised. Apperently there is already talk of setting up a large ‘holding’ camp at the entrance to the park to manage the entry of increasing numbers of people coming here.
It’s about 40 kilometres up and round the coast to Exmouth on the east of the peninsular, where we spend most of the morning stocking up on supplies, catching up on emails – we haven’t logged on for five days – and contacting the Indian embassy about visa arrangements. 10 working days are required to process an application from a non-resident of Australia, which mayput paid to our plans to spend the next three weeks making our way down to Perth; wee may have to fast forward our arrive in Perth in order to lodge our application at the consulate there. But, first we are going to investigate the possibility of applying by post and picking up the visas just before we fly out.
It takes a couple of hours to do the drive from Exmouth to Coral Bay. Coral Bay is described by Lonely Planet as a samll beachcomber village; but initial impressions are more of a very large caravan park. There are two caravan parks an a small shopping centre which seem to make up the entire community. So a little more commercialised and certainly a lot busier than we had anticipated. And expensive. A powered pitch is $33 , but tonight we are treating ourselves so that we can power up all our electrical gadgetry, have showers and do our laundry! It’s been five days since we have been able to do that! Although at Lakeside we were lucky enough to be camped next to a family who had a generator and were kind enough to charge one of our laptops everyday. Essential in order to keep up to date with the blogging.